
'-IP . 
Book —^ 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



POLITICS AND 
PERSONALITIES 

TVith Other Essays by 

The Right Hon. 

GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

597-599 FIFTH AVENUE 



J1A530 



.>: ^/n /<-, 



{All rights rcseived) 

(PRINTED IN GREAT BRITATN) 



1 



TO 

LANCELOT RIDLEY PHELPS 

Provost of Oriel 

In Honour of a Friendship 

Which began when we were Freshmen 



NOTE 

This book owes its existence to the kindness 
of Mr. Fisher Unwin, who happened to see 
some of the papers which compose it, and 
judged them' worthy of reproduction. 

My best thanks for permission to repro- 
duce them are due to the Editors of the Daily 
News, the Manchester Guardian, the Nation, 
and the Cornhill Magazine. 

G. W. E. R. 
June 26, 1917. 



CONTENTS 



I.— POLITICS AND THE CONSTITUTION 



I. TYRANNICIDE 

II. A FORGOTTEN PHRASE . 

III. ARISTOCRACY 

IV. THE HAWARDEN KITE . 
V. JOHN BULL IN IRELAND 

VI. M.P. OR DELEGATE ? 

VII. SCAPEGOATS 

VIII. DISAFFECTION AND ITS REMEDY 

IX. REPUBLICANISM 

X. ROYALTY 

XI. DICTATORSHIP . 

XII. THE WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION 

XIII. FRANCE IN ENGLAND . 



PACE 
15 

23 

31 

39 
46 

53 
60 

67 

75 
82 

93 
100 
III 



II.— IDEALS AND WAR 

I. CONSCIENCE AND CASUISTRY . 
II. CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE 



121 

128 

9 



CONTENTS 



III. THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY 

IV. THRIFT . 
V. CHIVALRY 

VI. THE DARK SIDE OF SCIENCE 

VII. WATERLOO 

VIII. GREECE. 



FAG 

. 187 



III.— PERSONALITIES, ANCIENT AND 
MODERN 

I. A QUEEN READY-MADE . . . I97 

II. AN UNCROWNED KING .... 217 

III. MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE . . 229 

IV. A NEST OF WHIGGERY .... 250 
V. DEMAGOGUES . . . • • 262 

VI. FROM ROME TO LONDON . . • 270 

VII. THE POWER OF SPEECH . . . 277 

VIII. CONSCIENCE AND ACTION . . . 285 



IV.— MISCELLANEA 

I. DESTINY 

II. THE SPIRITS IN PRISON 

III. EDUCATION 
10 



295 
304 
311 



CONTENTS 



IV. A DISREGARDED PROPHET 

v. GHOSTS . 

VI. WHY THURSDAY ? 

VII. IN HONOUR BOUND 

VIII. HATFIELD 

IX. BISHOPS AND ECONOMY 

X. CONSIDERATION 



334 

341 

348 

355 
362 



II 



I 

POLITICS AND THE 
CONSTITUTION 



I 

TYRANNICIDE 

I WAS lately addressing, an audience of 
working men on the ethical aspects of war. 
After the address there Was a discussion, 
and the question which excited the keenest 
debate was : " What are we to do with the 
Kaiser when the war is over?" In vain 
I reminded my friends of the adage about 
catching your hare before you cook him. 
Some— a few— were for St. Helena; the 
great majority were for capital punishment 
—either by shooting, as befits an officer 
and a gentleman, or by hanging, as the 
appropriate doom of one who has placed 
himself outside the pale of humanity. These 
interesting dissertations turned my thoughts to 
the venerable theme of Tyrannicide— to those 
who have practised it, and to those others 
who, in prose or in verse, have extolled it. 
One of the strangest incidents in Lord 

15 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Beaconsfield's strange career was his Revo- 
lutionary Epick. It was his first and last 
venture in poetry, and v^as pubUshed in 
1834, with an amazing, preface: — 

Standing upon Asia and gazing upon Europe, with 
the broad Hellespont alone between us, and the 
shadow of Night descending on the mountains, these 
mighty continents appeared to me as it were the Rival 
Principles of Government that at present contend for 
the mastery of the world. What ! I exclaimed, is the 
Revolution of France a less important event than the 
Siege of Troy ? Is Napoleon a less interesting 
character than Achilles ? For me remains the Revo- 
lutionary Epick. 

He accepted the task thus magnificently 
suggested, but discharged it with such in- 
different success that the book fell flat, 
and the disgusted author, to use his own 
quaint phrase, "hurled his lyre to Limbo." 
But of this unappreciated Epick a few lines 
survived, and were reproduced, to their 
author's consternation, thirty years later :— 

Pharaoh's doom 
Shall cool those chariot-wheels now hot with blood ; 
And blessed be the hand that dares to wield 
The regicidal steel that shall redeem 
A nation's sorrow with a tyrant's blood. 
16 



TYRANNICIDE 



In the session of 1864 John Bright, 
extenuating the charge of incitem'ent to 
Tyrannicide which had been brought against 
Mazzini, referred to this remarkable passage ; 
but, unfortunately, he had not armed him- 
self with the quotation, and Disraeli promptly 
disavowed it ; but he qualified the disavowal 
by publishing, after a decent interval, a 
new edition of the EpiCk, in which this 
passage about the regicidal steel and the 
tyrant's blood was discreetly watered down. 
Some tiresome investigator — I think Mr. 
T. P. O'Connor— detected the alteration, 
and A, M. Sullivan made effective use of 
the unaltered passage in defending the 
German Socialist, Johann Most, who was 
charged in 1881 with inciting to the murder 
of European sovereigns. 

Like all good Whigs, I revere the sacred 
year 1688, and among the many blessings 
which it has brought us is a singular 
immunity from Royal tragedies. Shake- 
speare, poor man, had only the materials 
of a ruder age out of which to construct 

his historical dramas. Could he have lived 
B 17 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

to see the beneficent reign of Whiggery he 
would have put something more ■ cheerful 
into Richard's mouth than those dismal 
lines about the deaths of kings :— 



How some have been deposed ; some slain in war ; 
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed ; 
Some poisoned by theii" wives ; some sleeping kill'd ; 
All murder'd. 



For murder he would have shown a moiae 
excellent way. He would have described 
the nocturnal flight of James II from White- 
hall, by the horse -ferry at Lambeth, to the 
Old Kent Road, and so to the coast and 
to hospitable France. He Would have dwelt 
with picturesque emphasis on the fatal act 
of dropping the Great Seal into the Thames 
(which constitutional pedants called an act 
of abdication), and would have shown the 
world that regicide is not the only method 
by which an irritated nation can change 
a dynasty . i 

Macaulay said : " In all honest and re- 
flecting minds there is a conviction, daily 
i8 



TYRANNICIDE 



strengthened by experience, that the means 
of effecting every improvement which the 
Constitution requires m^y be found within 
the Constitution itself." Macaulay, as we 
all know, had his heightened and emphatic 
way of saying things, but in this passage 
he saves himself from' the peril of over- 
statement by the judicious use of " honest 
and reflecting." There were movements, 
both in the eighteenth and in the nineteenth 
century, which seemed to challenge the 
capacity of the Constitution to effect all 
needful changes ; but Macaulay would have 
said that the minds which directed those 
movements were neither " honest " nor 
" reflecting." Certainly the Cato Street 
Conspiracy of 1820, which aimed at estab- 
lishing a Republic, and hoped to attract 
popular sympathy by parading the streets 
with the heads of the Cabinet Ministers 
borne on poles, showed little honesty and 
less reflection. The conspiracy failed, as 
it deserved to fail ; and, though the half- 
suppressed murmur of revolutionary voices 
was heard, on and off, during the next 

19 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

ten years, the auspicious event of June 20, 
1837, effectually hushed them'. But it is not 
always rem'embered that, again and again 
tragedy in its blackest form' came very 
near the young Queen's path. To the 
end of her long life she could never drive 
down Constitution Hill without a shudder- 
ing recollection of the attempt made on 
that spot, within six months of her marriage, 
to murder herself and her husband ; and 
on a similar attempt in 1849 Lord Shaftes- 
bury wrote in his diary : " The profligate 
George IV passed through a life of selfish- 
ness and sin without a single proved attempt 
to take it. This mild and virtuous young 
woman has four times already been exposed 
to imminent peril." 

That is the fact ; and it is significant. 
The horrible tragedies of Royalty, so merci- 
fully averted in England and so sadly 
realized in other countries, do not usually 
fall under the category of Tyrannicide. No 
one who heard it can ever forget the organ - 
voice of pathetic indignation in which Glad- 
stone, on the assassination of the Czar who 
20 



TYRANNICIDE 



had emancipated the serfs, declaimed the 
majestic lines :— 



Let tyrants govern with an iron rod ; 
Oppress, destroy, and be the scourge of God ; 
Since he, who hke a father held his reign — 
So soon forgot — was just and mild in vain. 



When Abraham Lincoln fell, shot through 
the head, in the theatre at Washington, the 
assassin sprang on to the stage, exclaiming, 
"Sic semper tyrannis ! " and the strange 
inaptness of the phrase threw a new light 
upon political assassination. Carnot and 
Garfield and McKinley are names that tell 
the same tale ; and, nearer home, the 
assassins of the Phoenix Park butchered 
an eminently humane administrator, and with 
him an English stranger who had not an 
enemy in the world. 

The " regicidal steel " may inspire the 
excited authors of Revolutionary Eplcks, 
and Charlotte Corday may have her right- 
ful place in the Kalendar of Humanitarian - 
ism ; but, before we can justify Tyrannicide 

31 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

we must be sure that we have found a 
Tyrant, and tyrants do not readily emerge 
from the well-ordered freedom of the modern 
world. 



II 

A FORGOTTEN PHRASE 

" Peace. Retrenchment, and Reform." These 
words carry us back to the first quarter 
of the nineteenth century. They formulate 
the desire of a people exhausted by the 
French War, taxed to bursting-point, and 
scandalously misgoverned. Peace was the 
ideal of the humanitarians and philosophers ; 
Reform the ideal of the politicians ; and, 
between the two, the economists, speaking 
by the mouth of Joseph Hume, inserted 
Retrenchment of a profligate and crushing 
expenditure. 

The phrase hit the popular fancy, and 
it held its own as an epitome of Liberal 
aspirations for thirty years after the Reform 
Bill had become law. But gradually the 
old ideals lost their attractiveness, and new 
theories of national prosperity made them- 

23 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

selves heard. To Matthew Arnold, sur- 
veying English politics with the dispassionate 
gaze of the critical outsider, the sacred 
formula seemed nothing but the " creed 
outworn " of a comfort -worshipping Philis- 
tinism, destitute of intelligence and ideas ; 
and he suggested as an amendment and 
expansion of it—" Peace to our nonsense, 
Retrenchment of our profligate expenditure 
of claptrap, and Reform of ourselves." 

This counsel, given first in 1866, seem'ed 
harsh and unpalatable to young and ardent 
Liberals, just delivered from Palmerston's 
paralysing influence and rejoicing in the 
imminent triumph of democracy. To be 
told, and told by a writer on the Liberal 
side, that our political philosophy was 
nonsense, that our eloquence was claptrap, 
and that we had better try to reform 
ourselves before 'we attempted to right the 
world, was a painful experience ; but we 
refused to be daunted. We pinned our 
faith upon Bright and Gladstone, and we 
honestly believed that, if only the artisans 
could get the vote, we should soon see 
24 



A FORGOTTEN PHRASE 

a new heaven and a new earth. For a 
while our faith seemed to be justified. 
The artisans came into their kingdom in 
1868, and' for the next five years we 
saw, at any rate, some approximation to 
the triumph of our principles. The democ- 
racy made Gladstone Prime Minister ; and, 
whatever else he did or failed to do, he 
kept England at peace when Europe was 
drenched in blood and the United States 
were clamouring for redress ; he retrenched 
expenditure with an even meticulous care ; 
and he effected som'e reforms which touched 
the bases of national life. The adminis- 
tration of 1868-74 left its permanent mark 
on our politics, and the Imperialist re- 
action under Lord Beaconsfield was a protest 
against the policy which had " shaken the 
citadel of privilege to its base." Gladstone's 
later administrations added very little to 
his earlier achievements ; and, as the Glad- 
stonian spirit subsided, the reaction, which 
had begun under Lord Beaconsfield, extended 
itself, at first insensibly, to the Liberal 
Party . 

25 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

It wt)uld be invidious to indicate the per- 
sonal channels through which this poison 
of Imperialism' made its way into the body 
of the Liberal Party. What is noteworthy, 
and lamentable, is that a pernicious in- 
fluence, communicated from above, found a 
ready lodgment in the very class to which 
reformers had looked for a resolute main- 
tenance of the old ideals. For twenty 
years the Liberal Party, sterilized and im- 
potent, saw its watchwords scouted ; and 
its appointed work performed, if performed 
at all, by its political opponents. The 
General Election of 1906 gave promise of 
better things. As a Party-triumph it was 
complete, but the victory had been won on 
an economic issue. The constituencies had 
been stirred into unusual activity by the 
menace of " Tariff Reform." They would 
have nothing to do with what Lord Goschen 
aptly called " a gamble in the food of the 
people " ; and, if only a candidate was 
sound on that immediate and most prac- 
tical issue, his sentiments on other ques- 
tions, equally fundamental but less urgent, 
26 



A FORGOTTEN PHRASE 

were not taken into account. Sir Henry 
Campbell-Bannerman was a staunch adherent 
of the old watchwords ; but, when Mr. 
Balfour suddenly resigned, circumstances 
forced "C.-B." to take into his adminis- 
tration a good many men whose opinions 
about Peace and Retrenchment differed 
widely from his own. The Prime Minister 
and all his colleagues, whether " Imperial- 
ists " or " Little Englanders," were re- 
formers, and we have reaped, and are still 
reaping, the fruits of their reforming zeal. 
But some of them' had contracted the in- 
fection of militarism, and had justified the 
carnage and rapine of South Africa. War 
and Retrenchment are incompatible ideals, 
and so two words of the vital three have 
gradually slipped out of the Party-motto. 
But war is not the only form of outlay 
against which it behoves the advocates of 
Retrenchment to protest. Every six months 
sees the birth of some newi Board or 
Department or Commission or Committee ; 
each of these institutions creates a large 

array of chairmen, secretaries, clerks, and 

27 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

inspectors ; and these good men, though 
no doubt they love their country, have 
no notion of serving it for naught. The 
proposed nationalization of the Liquor-Traffic 
would mean the formation of a new and 
vast army of Civil Servants, with a Minister 
of State at its head. For my owli part, I 
hate being governed and inspected and 
examined ; and when I feel that I have 
to pay (even in part) the spectacled gentle- 
man in seedy black who calls on behalf of 
the Inland Revenue, or the pert youth in 
blue serge and brown boots who wants to 
know if my kitchen-maid is insured, I long 
to lead an insurrection against our new 
bureaucracy. \ ' 

When we look from the lower to the 
higher ranks of these expensive tyrannies, 
I seem, not seldom, to perceive the taint 
of political jobbery — " My agent is a 
capital fellow— very keen for the Unionist 
Party, but not too scrupulous. He very 
nearly got me into a scrape last time. 
Couldn't you make him a Commissioner of 
something?" "Mr. Chadband's chapel is 
28 



A FORGOTTEN PHRASE 

a centre of Liberal activity in my division. 
He has a very clever daughter, who would 
make a capital Inspector." But, after all, 
we are only living, again the experiences 
of triumphant Liberalism under Grey and 
Melbourne and Althorp and the great men 
of 1830-41. (Sydney Smith, who had 
fought for Peace, Retrenchment, and Re- 
form when the cause was unpopular, smiled 
at the sequel of the victory when he 
saw Melbourne at the head of the adminis- 
tration — 

Strange and ludicrous are the changes in human 
affairs. The Tories are now on the treadmill, and 
the well-paid Whigs are riding in chariots, with many 
faces, however, looking out of the windows (including 
that of our Prime Minister) which I never remember 
to have seen in the days of the poverty and depression 
of Whiggism. Liberalism is now a lucrative business. 
Whoever has any institution to destroy may consider 
himself as a Commissioner and his fortune as made. 
. . . The whole earth is in commission, and the 
human race, saved from the flood, is delivered over 
to barristers of six years' standing. The burden of 
proof now lies upon any man who says he is not a 
Commissioner ; the only doubt on seeing a new man 
among the Whigs is, not whether he is a Com- 
missioner or not, but whether it is of Tithes, Poor 

29 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Laws, Boundaries of Boroughs, Church Leases, 
Charities, or any of the thousand human concerns 
which are now worked by Commissioners to the 
infinite comfort and satisfaction of mankind. 

Change the titles of these offices for 
their modern equivalents, and you have 
a fair picture of triumphant bureaucracy 
in these latter days. 



30 



Ill 

ARISTOCRACY 

Interpretation by etymology is always 
precarious. Long ago the acute .Whately 
illustrated this truth by, the instance of 
the Sycophant, who, etymologically, was 
a discoverer of figs, but in real life is a 
toady. Cowper contemned— 

The works of learn'd philologists, who chase 
A panting syllable through Time and Space ; 
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark, 
To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark. 

Yet the study of words has its uses ; 
and as we follow " Aristocracy," through 
Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle, from its 
first meaning — the Rule of the Best -born 
— till it comes to signify " the Rule of 

31 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

the Best," we trace a certain development 
of human reason. To live under the rule 
of the Best-born is an ignominy which 
even so staunch a lover of the ancient 
ways as Edmund Burke repudiated. Of 
Aristocracy in this sense he said : " If the 
Constitution must perish, I would rather 
by far see it resolved into any other form 
than lost in that austere and insolent domi- 
nation." But to live under the Rule 
of the Best has been, time out of mind, 
the ambition of such as frame Utopias. 
Generally, they have been agreed with Sir 
Thomas More that the most certain way 
of choosing the Best is by popular elec- 
tion, and modern propagators of Utopian 
ideas have formulated their doctrine in some 
such words as these : " Away with the 
spirit of Party- 1 Bring the battle of kites 
and crows to an end. Let the nation, 
either directly or through a representative 
apparatus, choose thirty or forty of its 
best men to fill the chief offices of State ; 
and, that done, let it surrender all govern- 
ment into the chosen hands, knowing that 
32 



ARISTOCRACY 



nothing and nobody can improve on the 
Best." 

To this prescription an ordinary English- 
man, whatever his political convictions, is 
apt to reply : " Not so . Even the best 
is liable to corruption, and nothing is so 
certain to corrupt 'an administration as the 
knowledge that it holds a blank cheque, 
and can draw without restraint on the 
confidence and support of the State." It 
was because Gladstone had been all but 
deified by the General Election of 1880 that 
the Liberal Government entered on its mad 
career in Egypt, Ireland, and the Soudan. 
It was because Lord Salisbury could count 
on the support of both sides that the 
South African War was possible. When, 
as in 1906, a Liberal Government has 
such a vast majority that it can despise 
the Irish vote, it drops the question of 
Home Rule, and only picks it up again 
when a diminished majority gives scope 
for effective criticism. Even a Ministry of 
All the Talents and All the Virtues, such 
as that under which we just now have 
c 33 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

the happiness to 'live, will probably do 
its work all the better because the Irish 
leaders have stayed, outside and can 
speak their mind when alike independent 
Liberalism and Conservative opposition have 
been muzzled. 

So much for that abnegation of criticism, 
which dwellers in Utopia recommended ; 
but there is an antecedent, and a still 
graver, difficulty. How can your forty 
Best Men be brought to act together, 
when, with motives equally patriotic, they 
are sharply divided by their rival theories 
of the public good? In normal times, the 
answer is that it is impossible. Authority 
and Freedom — Privilege and Equality — Col- 
lectivism and Individualism— Free Exchanges 
and Close Monopolies — these ideas, and a 
dozen others which might be cited, may 
in theory be not absolutely incompatible ; 
but, in practice, realities are stronger than 
words, and principles, even when not 
verbally expressed, have a way of making 
themselves felt in action. 

This is the reason why in normal times 
34 



ARISTOCRACY 



a Government of the Best is only an 
Utopian dream. But we are living in a 
time not normal. Since August 19 14 the 
face of the political world has been made 
new. The questions which then separated 
one Englishman from another have fallen 
into a very distant background ; and the 
State has no difficulty in finding its forty 
Best Men of* one mind with regard to 
the supreme issue of the moment. Those 
who have been trained in the traditions of 
English public life do not love Coalitions ; 
but, if the Cabinet as now reconstituted 
really contains the most serviceable brains 
and calmest nerves and highest characters 
which Parliament can supply, then I wish 
it God -speed with all my heart, and every 
patriot will say Amen." 

An absolute unity of mind and purpose 
among men of otherwise conflicting senti- 
ments is possible where a great principle 
emerges, and dominates all secondary issues. 
To-day such a principle animates us all, and 

' Mr. Asquith reconstituted his administration in 
May 1915. 

35 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

it is the serious conviction that our one 
duty as a State is to crush the militarism 
of Germany. As far as that principle is 
concerned, there is no more likelihood that 
Englishmen will differ than that the sun 
will fail in the heavens, or the hills will 
melt. The risk lies in another quarter, 
and it is the part of good citizenship to 
guard against it. No difference will arise 
about the principle of our national action : 
the end which we all seek is one. But 
there is a possibility of difference about 
methods, and a frightful responsibility will 
rest on any one — politician, journalist, or 
colonial bishop " — who endeavours to create 
a schism in the Government and in Par- 
liament over the question of compulsory 
service. As Mr. Asquith said the other 
day, a truce between parties for the period 
of the war, and even close association for 
Imperial purposes, does not mean that we 
have abandoned our ideals. 

It must be remembered that the danger 

' One of the South African Bishops was making 
** Jingo " speeches at this time. 
36 



ARISTOCRACY 



of attack from without, and the defence- 
less condition of our shores, were never 
the true motives of the cry for Conscription. 
The true motive was political and anti- 
democratic. If you take an English lad 
from his home, his friends, his chosen 
avocation ; deprive him of his natural 
freedom ; and force him through the mangle 
of a barrack and a regiment ; you have, no 
doubt, taught him, unless his nature be 
exceptionally robust, the lesson of obe- 
dience — of submission to an authority which 
he has not helped to create ; of willingness 
to surrender his private judgment to com- 
mands which he does not understand. In 
fine, you have done all you can to extin- 
guish the virtues of self-governing citizenship, 
and have laid, so far as is in your power, 
the foundation of an insolent despotism. 
This, I believe, is the ideal of Empire, 
as it presents itself to the minds of our 
military and literary and episcopal con- 
scriptionists. Swinburne, who read the 
thoughts of those false prophets as clearly 
as Mr. Sargent reads the characters of 

37 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

his sitters, put the creed of Jingoism into 
ringing verse : — 

But we know, we believe it, we see it — 
Force only has power upon earth — 

and he gave us our reply : — 

So be it ! and ever so be it 

For souls that are bestial by birth ! 



3? 



IV 

THE HA WARDEN KITE 

It is exactly thirty years since the re- 
markable creature whose name stands at 
the head of this paper began its eventful 
flight.' For that name I have Lord' Morley's 
high authority ; but, as some of my 
readers may have forgotten it, and others 
may never have heard it, I will treat it 
historically. 

The General Election of 1885 was just 
over. The Liberal ^ Party had gone into 
the election pledged up to the eyes against 
Home Rule, and, though Gladstone had 
been secretly converted to it, his conver- 
sion was known only to a privileged few. 
The election had resulted in a tie. The 
Tories had been in office since the previous 
June. The Irish members were then acting 

' Written in December 19 15. 

39 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

with the Tories, and the Liberals were 
just too few to defeat the combination. 
Lord Salisbury and his colleagues, there- 
fore, retained office, but it was obvious 
that the life of their Administration hung 
on a thread. 

As soon as the results of the election 
were complete, a little knot of active Radicals 
assembled under the late Mr. Chamberlain's 
hospitable roof at Highbury, to discuss the 
Parliamentary situation thus created. Very 
soon the sentiments of this conclave began to 
ooze out ; and, if correctly reported, they 
amounted to a repudiation of Gladstone's 
leadership. Gladstone and Chamberlain had 
fought the election in complete independence 
of one another, and Chamberlain had 
no wish to see his former chief replaced 
in command. The policy of Highbury 
was to leave the Tories in office, and 
press them into measures of domestic reform, 
such as Chamberlain had proposed in his 
" unauthorized programme," and Gladstone 
had ignored . 

Now there was in those days a busy 
40 



THE HAWARDEN KITE 

journalist called Wemyss Reid, who edited 
the Leeds Mercury, and there was a zealous 
M.P. called Herbert Gladstone (now Lord 
Gladstone), who sat for Leeds. Nothing 
could be more natural than that these two 
should discuss the rumours of what had 
happened at Highbury. If the plot against 
Gladstone's authority was to be defeated, it 
must be by some bold stroke which would 
rally Liberal opinion to Gladstone's side. 
An earnest but maladroit attempt to deal 
this stroke was made by the Leeds M.P. 
in conversation with the Leeds Editor, and 
the manager of a Press Agency was called 
into council . 

" Unluckily," says Lord Morley, " it would 
seem to need at least the genius of a Bismarck 
to perform the delicate office of inspiring 
a modern oracle on the journalistic tripod." 
There never was anything Bismarckian about 
Lord Gladstone, who simply told his own 
opinions about his father's attitude towards 
Home Rule, and left his journalistic friends 
to use the information as they thought 
best for the Liberal cause. The result 

41 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

was that in a communication from the 
National Press Agency on the night of 
December 1 6, and in the Standard and 
the Leeds Mercury of December 1 7, it 
was announced that Mr. Gladstone, if 
returned to power, was prepared to deal in 
a liberal spirit with the demand for Home 
Rule. 

Even after the lapse of thirty years I 
can feel the shock of that announcement. 
No Zieppelin has ever dropped a more 
startling or more disastrous bomb than that 
which fell from the " Hawarden Kite." 
Down to December 1885, English politi- 
cians who were favourable to Home Rule, 
or, indeed, had seriously considered it, might 
be counted on the fingers of one hand. 
Denunciations of Parnell's aims and methods 
had been the commonplaces of Liberal, 
as well as Conservative, oratory. In some 
districts the Liberals had won by defying 
the Irish vote, and swearing hostility to 
Home Rule. This, for example, was the 
case of Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord 
James of Hereford) at Bury. " Mr. Glad- 
42 



THE HAWARDEN KITE 

stone," he said, " has been more than a 
leader to me — he has been a father. But, 
even if he were to go down on his knees, 
and beg me to vote for Home Rule, I 
should be constrained by conscience to 
say him Nay." 

Suddenly the Liberal party was called to 
approve what it had hitherto been taught 
to condemn, and no one knew for cer- 
tain on what authority the call was made. 
On the 17th of December Gladstone told the 
world by telegraph that the statement in 
the papers was not an accurate represen- 
tation of his views, but a speculation upon 
them ; and that it had been published 
without his knowledge or authority. Lord 
Morley has justly observed that the publi- 
cation was neither to Gladstone's advantage, 
nor consistent with his political strategy. 
" Never was there a moment when every 
consideration of political prudence more 
imperatively counselled silence." But the 
silence was broken beyond repair ; the 
Kite had mounted, and the bomb had 
fallen. 

43 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

The explosion was followed by a storm 
of questions, contradictions, explanations, 
enthusiasms, and jeremiads. But amidst 
all the hurly-burly Gladstone held his peace. 
He would neither confirm nor deny. The 
public must wait and see. The subject 
was one which could only be handled by 
a responsible Ministry. The intriguers, the 
quidnuncs, and the busybodies had the time 
of their lives. They ran hither and thither 
seeking information, finding none but in- 
venting much, cross -questioning politicians 
and wire-pulling the Press. To one of 
this enquiring tribe Gladstone wrote on the 
23rd of December— 

Of the conditions of any measure for Ireland, or 
of my own intentions about one, I have not given to 
any human being any binding indication : beyond 
this, that if the Government take up the question, my 
desire is to give them the best aid that, with a 
reasonable freedom of judgment, I may. 

The bewilderment and confusion of the 
Liberal Party were absolute. No one knew 
what was coming next ; who was on which 
side ; or whither his party— or, indeed, him- 

44 



THE HA WARDEN KITE 

self— was tending. For politicians, it was a 
troublous Christmas. By February 1886 
Gladstone was again Prime Minister, pledged 
to Home Rule in a form scarcely distinguish- 
able from separation. Six strenuous months 
followed. The Liberal Party was rent 
asunder. The Home Rule Bill was thrown 
out. Another General Election took place. 
By August 1886 the constituencies had 
rejected Gladstone's Irish policy, and the 
Tories had entered on a lease of power 
which lasted till the end of 1905. Such 
is the history of the " Hawarden Kite." 
After thirty years' gyrations, it seems to 
be settling down ; though I understand 
that, just for the moment, it is suspended 
in mid -air. 



45 



V 
JOHN BULL IN IRELAND 

As a rule, I am wholly free from the 
dramatic illusion. To me a play* is! a 
performance, good ori bad as the case 
may be, but bearing little or no relation 
to reality. An exception to this rule was 
supplied by " John Bull's Other Island." 
When the Liberal Carpet-bagger proclaimed 
to the Irish peasants the immortal truth 
that " 'What Ireland wants is a strong 
Liberal Government," my own voice came 
back to me, echoed from the platform 
of the 'eighties. John Bull in Ireland 
is not seen at his best ; but, before we 
discuss his doings, let us consider his 
character . 

In the first place, we are no longer, 
as Ruskin used to say, that we were, " un- 
degenerate in race — a race mingled of the 
46 



JOHN BULL IN IRELAND 

best northern blood." Within the last fifty 
years abundant tributaries of foreign blood 
— French, German, Jewish, American — have 
flowed into the main life -current of the 
nation. Even I who pen these pages, though 
a thorough -going Briton, am' not of 
purely English blood. I am compounded 
of English and Celtic blood in the pro- 
portion of two' and^ two. And, when- 
ever the Celtic element is introduced, it 
modifies even visibly the phlegmatic tem- 
perament which used to characterize John 
Bull. 

Then, again, as to his external charac- 
teristics, the type has changed out of all 
recognition, as every one can see who 
compares a snapshot of a contemporary 
crowd with Punches John Bull of fifty 
years ago. When the external character- 
istics are completely changed, do the 
internal characteristics remain what they 
were? In some respects, yes. Burke 
professed his reliance on " the ancient and 
inbred integrity and piety, good nature 
and good humour of the English people " ; 

47 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

and those qualities are still the bed-rock 
of national character. In spite of all that 
is said, England remains the most reli- 
gious country in Europe. I am old enough 
to remember the astonishment of the French 
newspapers when, at the crisis of King 
Edward's dangerous illness of 1871, the 
English people betook themselves, like one 
man, to prayer. And the phenomenon 
which then caused so much astonishment 
is a commonplace to-day. 

But while this characteristic of essential 
religiousness remains the same, it certainly 
has gathered round it, of late years, some 
less admirable attributes. The old John 
Bull was obstinate, pig-headed, narrow- 
minded ; but he was not hypocritical — • 
or rather, his was an inverted hypocrisy. 
He was ashamed of seeming as good as 
he really was, and was apt to keep his 
spiritual experiences to himself. Quite 
different is the aspect which he presents 
to a critical world to-day. Here is an 
American appreciation of him : " The Briton 
is the modern Pharisee, who has looted 
48 



JOHN BULL IN IRELAND 



the world, and for a pretence makes long 
prayers. He never ceases to boast that 
he whipped Krance at Waterloo and Tra- 
falgar, and bested the whole Continent at 
the Game of Grab." To what a pass have 
we come when John Bull's grandchildren 
thus satirize his methods ! 

Another characteristic of the traditional 
John Bull was his serene contentment with 
things as they are. He was, as Sydney 
Smith said, " delighted with every existing 
institution and almost every existing cir- 
cumstance." Such a one was Byron's 
typical John Bull : — 

He liked our taxes, when they're not too many ; 

He hked a sea-coal fire, when not too dear ; 
He hked a beef-steak, too, as well as any — 

Had no objection to a pot of beer. 

Fifty years later iWhyte -Melville, another 
social critic who saw life from the top, 
said of his typical Englishman : " He shaved 
scrupulously, drank port wine, and believed 
in the Times.'" To-day an Englishman 
may be as hairy as Esau ; his doctor 
assures him that port is poison ; and 
D 49 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

he has views about the Northcliffe Press. 
He travels — or did before the War — 
and comes back with unnatural pre- 
ferences for German stoves or Italian 
wood-fires ; thinks a skinny chicken and 
thin Moselle the true diet ; and is more 
than half inclined to prefer bureaucracy 
to self-government. 

John Bull honestly despised all foreigners. 
Lord Palmerston was never more typically 
and representatively British than when he 

called Germany " that country of d d 

professors." We were reared from our 
cradles in the creed that " Foreigners don't 
wash " ; and that statement seemed to hold 
the key of all international perplexities. 
We believed absolutely that no foreigner 
could ride, row, or shoot ; and, in spite 
of a good deal of experience to the con- 
trary, we half believed that foreigners 
could not fight . 

Even darker suspicions of his European 
neighbours haunted the unregenerate mind 
of John Bull. Foreigners were conspirators. 
Foreigners were debauchees. Foreigners 
50 



JOHN BULL IN IRELAND 

were either idolators or atheists. I have 
heard that, after my great-uncle, Lord 
'Wilham Russell, was murdered by his Swiss 
valet, it was for many years impossible for a 
foreign servant to get a place in London. 

A greatly increased acquaintance with the 
world outside England has modified these 
insular prejudices of the traditional John 
Bull. »We have been forced to admit that 
foreigners can fight and Colonials ride. 
•We have learnt to behave ourselves with 
comparative decency in foreign churches. 
We no longer denounce the Roman Catholic 
religion as " a lie and a heathenish super- 
stition." America no longer has occasion 
to complain of that " condescension " on 
the part of English people which once 
stirred Lowell's indignation. It is chiefly 
in reference to Ireland that John Bull 
still vaunts himself with offensive superiority. 

Long ago Matthew Arnold pointed out 
that one of the chief reasons for the 
eternal misunderstanding between Ireland 
and England was the fact that the English 
were represented in Ireland chiefly by people 

51 



^ 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

like Murdstone and Quinion in David 
Copperfield, and by the products of 
Salem House and Mr. Creakle. "The Irish 
people," he said, " are capable of feeling 
thoroughly the attraction of the power of 
manners," but they do not feel it in the 
case of those who compose the English 
garrison. " The genuine, unmitigated Murd- 
stone is the common middle-class English- 
man, who has come forth from Salem 
House, and Mr. Creakle. He is seen in 
full force, of course, in the Protestant north ; 
but throughout Ireland he is a prominent 
figure of the English garrison. Him the 
Irish see, see him only too much and 
too often ; and he represents to them the 
promise of English civilization." 

Thirty years have passed, and, as far 
as "his relations with Ireland are concerned, 
John Bull remains the same graceful figure 
that Matthew Arnold knew so well. All 
this time he has been governing Ireland, 
with the results which we saw at Easter 
1 9 1 6 ; but perhaps he is now approaching 
the end of his reign. 
52 



VI 
M.P. OR DELEGATE? 

" The Union of Democratic Control " is 
a body about which I am very imperfectly 
informed. In so far as it seeks to bring 
the war-making and treaty-making powers 
of the Crown under the cognizance of 
Parliament, I am at one with it ; for that 
is a change in our constitutional arrange- 
ments which I have always favoured. There 
may, however, be. points in the policy 
of the Union to which I could by no 
means subscribe ; and I cannot be sur- 
prised that my friend Mr. Charles Tre- 
velyan should find himself at issue with 
his constituents. If I were a voter in 
the Elland Division I think it probable 
that I might be obliged to give my 
representative what is called "a bit of 
my mind " — even that proverbially disagree - 

53 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

able " bit " which conscientious people reserve 
for their erring friends. 

But I am bound to say that, in my 
opinion, Mr. Trevelyan, in replying to his 
Liberal Association, took exactly the right 
line, and stated the constitutional relation 
between Member and Constitueets with force, 
dignity, and good temper. The parallel, 
tempting enough in some respects, which 
the Times drew between Mr. Trevelyan's 
letter and Mr. Gregsbury's reply to " his 
old friend Pugstyles " fails in one all- 
important particular. According to the 
unchallenged statement of the deputation 
which invited Mr. Gregsbury to resign his 
seat, that legislator had broken all the 
pledges on the strength of which he had 
been elected. Mr. Trevelyan seems to 
have broken none. He tells us that his 
votes and speeches have been in exact 
accordance with the declarations which he 
made when he was elected, and I have 
not seen his statement contradicted. It 
may be true that his present actions are 
distasteful to his constituents ; but, unless 
54 



M.P, OR DELEGATE? 



it can be shown that they are inconsistent 
with his pledges given at his election, the 
constituents have no right to demand his 
resignation. 

Here, I take it, is the difference between 
a Member of Parliament, and the Delegate 
of some alliance or confederation. The 
delegate, I believe, undertakes to vote as 
the body which elects him may from 
time to time desire. He abjures private 
judgment, and makes himself a voting- 
machine. The Member of Parliament is 
bound only by the professions which he 
made when he sought election. He secured 
his majority by professing such and such 
convictions ; and, so long as he maintains 
them and acts upon them, he is fulfilling 
his compact with the constituency. The 
constituents may change their minds, but 
they have no right to blame him because 
he stands fast to what he professed. Their 
opportunity comes with the next election. 
Then they can say, in the effective form 
of action : " The opinions which you hold 
are no longer ours, and we must seek a 

55 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

representative who agrees with us." Our 
political history abounds in such sever- 
ances, and they irnply no discredit to 
either side. For example, no one alleged 
that Gladstone, in the Parliament of 1859, 
violated the pledges on which he had been 
elected by the University of Oxford, or that, 
in the Parliament of 1865, he had broken 
faith with South Lancashire. There were 
a great many of his constituents who 
extremely disliked his votes in both Par- 
liaments ; but no one asked him to resign. 
A disaffected constituent who had ventured 
on such a suggestion would have been 
promptly challenged to show the violated 
pledge ; and, failing to do so, he would 
have received a lecture on the relations 
between the representative and the repre- 
sented which would have enlarged his 
constitutional knowledge. 

In both cases, the constituency changed 
its mind during the life of the Parlia- 
ment, and, when the day of reckoning came, 
dismissed its Member, though he was the 
foremost man in the Liberal Party. But no 



M,P. OR DELEGATE? 



one ever suggested that Gladstone ought to 
resign before the Dissolution, because the 
opinions which were popular at his election 
had since lost their popularity. John Bright 
knew very well that his opposition to the 
Chinese War was unpopular in Manchester ; 
but he never dreamed of resigning his 
seat. He had been elected as an advo- 
cate of peace, and he stood his ground 
till Manchester dismissed him. To take 
a more recent instance, the same difficulty 
beset the Liberals who in 1885 had been 
returned as opponents of Homie Rule. After 
the General Election, Gladstone's conversion 
was announced, and the Caucus decreed that 
all Liberals were to follow their leader. 
Some weak-kneed brethren succumbed to 
pressure ; but men of robuster material 
said : " We were elected to oppose Home 
Rule, and we shall vote according to our 
pledges. We shall neither turn our coats 
nor resign our seats "—and the Election of 
1886 in most cases ratified their decision. 
Exactly similar was the case of the Unionist 
Free Traders, who, when Tariff Reform 

57 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

was broached, found that the wire-pullers 
expected them to renounce Free Trade. 
The stronger men stuck to their beliefs 
and their seats, and left the constituencies 
to decide the issue at the General Election 
of 1906. 

Obviously and entirely different is the 
case of the M.P. who, having been elected 
on a certain confession of faith, changes 
his mind during the life of the Parlia- 
ment, and finds that he can no longer 
pursue the p,olicy to which he pledged 
himself. In such circumstances an honest 
man does not wait for representations from 
his former supporters. He resigns his seat, 
and appeals from^ the Caucus to the 
constituency. Thus the late Sir -William 
Marriott, having been returned as a Liberal 
for Brighton in 1880, changed his opinions 
in 1884, resigned his seat, .and was 
triumphantly re-elected as a Conservative ; 
and, in more recent years, the same course 
has been pursued by Home Rulers who 
have turned Unionist, and Unionists who 
have turned Home Rulers. 
58 



M.P. OR DELEGATE? 

If, then, Mr. Trevelyan had changed 
the opinions which at the last Election 
commended him to the Elland Division, 
he would be bound by propriety and right 
feeling to resign and offer himself, for 
re-election. But, if he stands now where 
he stood then, he should keep his seat 
and vote, not as others wish, but as he 
himself thinks right. Surely no one will 
be so foolish as to suggest that Sir John 
Simon ought, because he has retired 
from the .Cabinet, to retire also from 
Walthamstow. Lord Kitchener, in support- 
ing the Compulsion Bill, suggested with 
admirable gravity, that men who doubted 
about their duty in the matter of military 
service would be only too glad to have 
their doubts settled for them by authority ; 
and what that gallant soldier thought about 
military service the Caucus seem to think 
about political duty. But there will always 
be a " remnant " who prefer to shape their 
own course, and who own no authority 
except conscience . 



59 



VII 

SCAPEGOA TS 

From time to time during the last two 
years " scapegoats " have figured prominently 
in the newspapers. One day Lord Derby 
gave us his opinion of these long-suffering 
animals, and his way of handling them 
suggests that the origin and significance 
of the Scapegoat has lapsed out of sight. 
Commenting on certain miscarriages in our 
military administration, his lordship said that, 
if the English people must have scapegoats, 
they had better make scapegoats of them'- 
selves. It might tend to clearness of thought 
if he would turn to the Book of Leviticus, 
and would investigate the origin of a phrase 
which, like so many images and aphorisms, 
found its way from the Bible into our 
common speech. He will find it in the 
Day of Atonement, as enjoined by Moses 
60 



SCAPEGOATS 



on the Israelites, and in the ritual of 
the Tabernacle. The ceremonies of the 
day were singularly elaborate and detailed, 
and at a certain point the High Priest 
presented two young goats at the door of 
the Tabernacle, and cast lots upon them. 
On one lot was inscribed " For Jehovah," 
on the other " For Azazel "—a mysterious 
appellation on which commentators have ex- 
pended volumes of curious learning. The 
goat dedicated to Jehovah was killed, and 
its blood sprinkled on the sacred shrine. 
This done, the High Priest laid his hands 
on the head of the goat " for Azazel," 
and confessed over it all the sins of the 
people. The goat was forthwith led into 
the wilderness, into " a land not inhabited," 
and was then let loose. 

There the prescribed observance ends. 
The sin-laden goat vanishes into the un- 
seen. It is true that the genius of 
Holman Hunt depicted it, the most forlorn, 
dejected, and broken-down creature in the 
world, stumbling across an arid desert to 
some unknown doom ; but that was only 

6i 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

a flight of fancy, and not less fanciful are 
the innumerable and contradictory interpre- 
tations which Jewish and Christian exposi- 
tors have attached to the whole observance. 
Only one point seems to emerge quite clearly. 
An entire people cannot make scapegoats 
of them'selves ; for it is of the essence 
of the symbolism that the selected victim 
bears vicariously the sins of others, and 
suffers for wrongdoing in which it has 
had no part. 

There is something impressive and in- 
structive in the fact that the popular 
imagination of four centuries has fastened 
on the Scapegoat, and has disregarded the 
goat that was sacrificed. Is it fanciful to 
read in this discrimination the tacit belief 
that disgrace and exile and contemptuous 
oblivion are heavier evils than the sharp 
stroke of death? 

I have spoken of four centuries, for it 
is only since the translation of the Bible 
that " The Scapegoat "—caper emissarius, as 
the Vulgate calls him^has become familiar 
to English thought and speech . But the 
62 



SCAPEGOATS 



tendency, when things go wrong, to seize 
upon some inoffensive victim and hound 
him to destruction, is a good deal older 
than the Reformation, and will probably 
survive the twentieth century. " I have 
loved righteousness and hated iniquity ; 
therefore I die in exile," is a cry which, 
since Hildebrand uttered it, every age has 
re-echoed ; and the irritated populace has 
not always stopped short at exile and the 
image of the Scapegoat, but has preferred 
the shorter method of sword or axe or 
stake. Tyrannicide has had its apologists 
—Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Shelley, and 
even the young Disraeli ; but tyrannicide 
implies a tyrant, and a tyrant justly suffers 
for his misdeeds. The Scapegoat is the 
man who suffers, not for wrongdoing of 
his own, but because others have done 
wrong, and the public temper is inflamed. 
Savonarola and Molinos were scapegoats 
in the truest sense of the phrase, each 
bearing the sins of a licentious and con- 
science-stricken age. Louis XVI expiated 
in his own unoffending person the accumu- 

63 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

lated crimes of a corrupt dynasty. The 
scapegoat of American slavery was Lincoln, 
who abolished it, and died a victim to the 
rage of the baffled slave-owners. The scape- 
goat of Russian autocracy was Alexander II, 
who liberated the serfs and was assassi- 
nated by the Nihilists. The scapegoat of 
English misrule in Ireland was Lord 
Frederick Cavendish, than whom Ireland 
never had a truer friend. 

I have spoken, so far, of countries more 
or less remote from our own ; but in the 
assertion of our own liberties we too have 
made free use of scapegoats. How far 
Charles I suffered for sins not his own 
is a question which Debating Societies will 
discuss to the end of time. James II, 
vanishing by night into exile and oblivion, 
and bearing with him' the iniquities of all 
the Stuarts, was a scapegoat with a differ- 
ence ; for, though he suffered vicariously, 
he suffered for his own sins as well. 

I turn from heroic and historic examples 
to the homely politics of the present day. 
Our wonderful Constitution has cleverly 
64 



SCAPEGOATS 



adapted itself to changed conditions, has 
made all rough dealing with crowned heads 
unnecessary, and has provided an official 
scapegoat whenever the need for such a 
victim arises. On this point we can have 
no safer guide than Gladstone, who 
played the part of Scapegoat more than 
once — " In every free State, ifor every 
public act, some one must be responsible ; 
and the question is, who shall it be ? " 
Gladstone answers : " The Minister, and 
the Minister exclusively," and it is to be 
observed that when he says " The Minister," 
he means the Prime Minister, though, when 
he wrote, that title had not been, as it 
is now, officially recognized. He thus 
expounds the difference between the Prime 
Minister and his colleagues : " The head 
of the British Government is not a Grand 
Vizier. He has no powers, properly so 
called, over his colleagues ; on the rare 
occasions when a Cabinet determines its 
course by the votes of its members, his 
vote counts only as one of theirs. But 
they are appointed and dismissed by the 
E 65 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



Sovereign on his advice."' The resigna- 
tion of the Prime Minister has the effect 
of dissolving the Cabinet. The resignation 
of any other Minister only creates a vacancy. 
'Here we see our Constitutional scapegoat. 
If things go wtong in this department or 
in that, it is idle to attack Mr. Secretary 
Taper, or his friend Tadpole, President of 
the Circumlocution Office. If Taper and 
Tadpole are incompetent or injudicious or 
disaffected, it is the duty of the Prime 
Minister, who recommended them for office, 
to recomimend their dismissal. Unless and 
until he does so he must bear the respon- 
sibility for their misconduct ; and even 
if he delays to act after the case is 
proved, his action, taken too late, will not 
relieve him of the responsibility. When 
the moment comes for the nation to act 
by a General Election, he will find himself 
driven into the dreary wilderness to keep 
company with the caper emlssarius.^ 

' Alas ! he had not to wait for the General Election. 



66 



ii 



VIII 
DISAFFECTION AND ITS REMEDY 

It was, I think, Robert Southey who said : 
" I am no more ashamed of having been 
a Republican than of having been young." 
The same boast, or confession, might have 
been made, thirty years after Southey's 
time, by men who were growing up in 
the 'seventies of the last century. Echoes 
of the older republicanism' still lingered 
in the political air. Algernon Sidney 'was 
still quoted on platforms. The French 
Revolution was cited as the birth of the 
new world. The downfall of the Monarchies 
in 1848 was remembered by men who were 
still active in politics. Edmond Beales, 
haranguing the Reform' League in Hyde 
Park, protested that he was not a " sub- 
ject," but a " citizen." Bradlaugh rushed 
about the country " impeaching the House 

67 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

of Brunswick." Dilke and Auberon Herbert 
divided the House of Commons against the 
Civil List. The collapse of the Second 
Empire seemed to threaten older thrones. 
Mr. John Morley, in Compromise, protested 
against outward signs of reverence for 
royalty. Queer old democrats like Nieass 
of Chelsea (whom the Times, to his dis- 
gust, called "Niceass"), used to sit when 
the Queen's health was drunk, and keep 
their heads covered when the National 
Anthem was played. Ardent youths longed 
for the fast -approaching day when " the 
last king should be strangled in the bowels 
of the last priest " ; and even sedate pub- 
hcists hke R. H. Hutton, of the Spectator, 
gravely pronounced that Republican institu- 
tions were " more self-respecting " than those 
under which we live. 

But, as the 'seventies advanced towards 
the 'eighties, this anti -monarchical senti- 
ment was seen to waver, and then to dis- 
appear. The nearly fatal illness of the 
Prince of Wales at the end of 1 8 7 1 had 
disclosed an unsuspected depth of national 
68 



DISAFFECTION AND ITS REMEDY 

feeling for the Crown, and the events of 
each succeeding year made that feeUng 
stronger. Queen Victoria, emerging from 
her ten years' seclusion, acquired a popu- 
larity enhanced by reverence, which deepened 
and increased until she became, as it were, 
a divinity in her lifetime ; and there were 
two personal forces in the political world 
which tended in the same direction. Dis- 
raeli's bizarre genius had always perceived 
that a sympathy between " the Monarch 
and the Multitude " was the strongest safe- 
guard of the Throne ; all his energies 
were employed to make that sympathy real, 
and he knew exactly how to play on the 
foibles of both the parties involved. On 
the other hand, Gladstone was just reach- 
ing the height of his power ; he had 
been acclaimed as leader of the demo- 
cratic party, so far as England knows 
anything of democracy ; and at the same 
time he was almost an idolator of the 
Throne. Of all our national institutions, 
it was the one which he was most prone 
to idealize. " His sense of chivalry," says 

69 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Lord Morley, " his sense of an august 
tradition continuously symbolized by an his- 
toric throne, moved him as the sight of 
the French Queen at Versailles had moved 
the majestic imagination of Burke a cen- 
tury before. From beginning to end he 
stood sentry over the interests, whether 
profound and enduring or trivial and fleet- 
ing, of the ancient monarchy of this king- 
dom." When the two great political parties 
of the country are dominated by men so 
devoted to the monarchical principle as 
Gladstone and Disraeli, the murmurs of 
disaffection are hushed ; and when, further- 
more, the Crown is identified in the popular 
view with private virtue and public service, 
the anti -monarchical spirit finds little to 
feed on. When Queen Victoria died, it 
was justly enumerated among the triumphs 
of her reign that she had lived through, 
and had lived down, Republicanism'. 

One of the most thoughtful books on 
the philosophy of politics which have 
appeared of late years was the great Duke 
of Argyll's treatise on The Unseen Foun- 
70 



DISAFFECTION AND ITS REMEDY 

dations of Society. That those foundations 
are hable to incalculable disturbances is 
a truth familiar to all whose studies carry^ 
them below the surface of things ; and 
close observers think that just now they 
can perceive some disquieting vibrations. 
" Republic," " Republican," " Republican- 
ism," are words which had disappeared 
from common parlance ; but within the 
last few months they have been heard 
again, and heard in unlikely quarters. In 
one respect we seem to have improved upon 
the manners of the last generation, for 
when people discuss the m'onarchy they 
discuss it only as an institution, and eschew 
the evil precedent of 1871, when Queen 
Victoria herself was not free from insult 
and reproach. It is observed that the 
men and women who speak rudely of King 
George V are not serious -minded citizens, 
but the raffish denizens of a certain sec- 
tion of so-called Society — (Mr. Richard 
Whiteing has described it in The Yellow 
Van) — who feel their own moral practice 
rebuked by the daily life of an immacu- 

71 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

late and duty-loving Court. The serious 
people avoid personalities, and deal only 
with institutions. Rightly or wrongly, they 
believe that monarchy makes for war. 
They remember the evil deeds of Kings 
and Emperors ; they forget the machina- 
tions of political conspirators like Bismarck ; 
the financial pressure which forced Great 
Britain to occupy Egypt and desolate South 
Africa ; the blundering diplomacy which 
has repeatedly led us to, and sometimes 
over, the brink of avoidable war. Re- 
publics, they say, do not m'ake war. If 
Germany or Austria had been ruled by a 
President instead of an Emperor, Europe 
might still be at peace. They point to 
the infinite complexity of Royal relation- 
ships, and hint, or more than hint, that the 
King of the Hellenes would not have been 
allowed to cozen and browbeat the Allies 
if he had no near kinsfolk on more 
important thrones . 

Then, again, the people who use this kind 
of language have apparently only realized 
since the war began that the blood of 
72 



DISAFFECTION AND ITS REMEDY 

our reigning house is almost exclusively 
German — for tiny indeed, and much diluted, 
is the drop of Stuart blood which the 
framers of the Act of Settlement dis- 
covered in the House of Hanover. For 
my own part, I hold that no psychology 
could be more erroneous than that which 
assumes that because a man is one's cousin 
one must love him and wish him success. 
But the critics who just now are canvass- 
ing monarchical institutions appear to 
believe that even the faintest consanguinity 
is a stronger bond than patriotism and 
public faith . 

I was brought up by people who remem- 
bered the older generation of the Royal 
Family, and they always declared that Queen 
Victoria's uncles and aunts had lost all 
trace of Germanism, and alike in their 
appearance, their character, and their speech, 
were as typically English as that loved 
and lamented lady who was the mother 
of our present Queen. The Royal Marriage 
Act, limiting the free choice of English 
princes and princesses by artificial restric- 

73 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

tions, was one of the most indefensible 
statutes which ParUament ever passed. It 
put difTficulties, often insuperable, in the 
way of such alliances as had linked the 
Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts 
to the English people ; and it helped to 
impress a foreign stamp on two genera- 
tions of the House of Hanover. There 
is to-day a well-beloved young prince, as 
English in character as in face, who is 
serving England on the soil of France.' Let 
Providence grant him an English wife, and 
the last murmur of disaffection will be 
drowned in the cheerful chorus of national 
rejoicing. 

' Written in 1917. 



74 



IX 

REP UBLICA NISM 

My paper on " Disaffection," when it 
was originally published, brought me a 
good deal of' correspondence. This is all 
to the good, for such topics are much the 
better for free discussion. A question 
which in substance has been asked by 
several correspondents is this : "In what 
section of the populace do you meet the 
language of Disaffection, which you de- 
scribe ? " I reply : In the rafffsh fringe 
of smart society, in the lower middle class, 
and among metropolitan artisans. As far 
as I know, the rural population has never 
been touched by Disaffection. Having, 
from my earliest childhood, been familiar 
with agricultural labourers, their lives, their 
prejudices, and their desires, I deliberately 
consider them' the most sensible portion of 

75 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

the Body Politic. They know exactly the 
grievances under which they suffer, they 
have a shrewd notion of the possible 
remedies, and they do not trouble them- 
selves with idle speculation. A long 
hereditary tradition of keeping their own 
counsel makes them uncommunicative to 
strangers and busybodies ; habitual contact 
with the realities of nature and of life 
makes them wisely indifferent to bombast. 
Certainly it is not in the rural population 
that I should expect to find Disaffection, 
in the sense in which I used the word. 
To the sections which I enumerated above 
I ought to add— though it is only a minute 
sub -section— the little band of those who 
believe that the Legitimate Sovereign of 
this realm' is to be found in Bavaria, and, 
therefore, that the actual monarchy has 
no moral claim on our allegiance. But 
these, who used to call Queen Victoria " The 
Dowager Princess Albert of Saxe-Coburg," 
are too few to count. Dante -like, we will 
regard them and pass on. But one of my 
correspondents, though disclaiming any sym- 
76 



REPUBLICANISM 



pathy with the White Rose, yet advanced 
the curious theory that, if the direct hne 
of the Stuarts had continued to occupy 
the Throne — in other words, if the Revo- 
lution of 1688 had never occurred— the 
monarchy would be stronger than it is 
now in the affections of the people. Specu- 
lations on the might-have-beens of history 
are always interesting ; but to imagine that 
James Francis, or Charles Edward, or Henry 
Benedict, would have established an abiding 
hold on the affections of England, seems to 
me the very topsy-turVydom of conjecture. 
Private correspondence and public criti- 
cism alike have ratified my account of 
Republicanism' as it existed here in the 
later 'sixties and early 'seventies of the 
last century. Mr. Herbert Burrows made 
the interesting statement that Bradlaugh 
held King Edward's illness of December 
1 8 7 1 to have put the clock back for fifty 
years. (I quote by memory.) But his 
victory over typhoid Was not the only 
service which King Edward rendered to 
the cause of monarchy. His unfailing tact, 

77 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



his genial courtesy, his dignity of bearing 
on all ceremonial occasions, his love of 
befitting splendour, and his unaffected sym- 
pathy with the social ideas of the English 
people— all these things Were elements in 
his popularity, and enabled him to confirm 
and consolidate our national loyalty. " Vive 
la Republique ! " cried a not unfriendly 
voice as he drove through the streets of 
Paris. " Mais c'est pour la France," was 
his prompt and smiling reply. There was 
a world of meaning in that Mais, and 
both countries apprehended it. One of 
my cor,respondents said with perfect truth : 
" The sentimental value of the Crown in 
regard to the Dominions and Colonies is 
undoubted. Would it hold equally with a 
Republic? Take India— would the Princes 
there bear cheerful allegiance to a politician 
elected to be President? I trow not." 

Another force which contributed to the 
decay of Republicanism' was the increasing 
power and audacity of Capital. Observant 
citizens saw the far-reaching and secretive 
operations of Capitalism directed to the 
78 



REPUBLICANISM 



attainment of political power, and often 
attaining it. They realized that any foriri 
of Government, other than a strictly 
hereditary Monarchy, would give infinitely 
enlarged scope to the power of mere 
wealth, and would create a new world of 
log-rolling and axe -grinding, of chicanery 
and intrigue, with the object of putting 
Lord X. or Mr. Z. in the supreme place. 
John Bright once said, with characteristic 
sense : " The question between Monarchy 
and Republicanism' was settled by our fore- 
fathers a good many years ago, and I see 
no reason to unsettle it." But, for reasons 
which I indicated in a former chapter, there 
has of late been some return, in certain 
sections of the Body Politic, to the idea 
of Republicanism. This my correspondents 
admit ; and some, not content with re- 
gretting, suggest remedies for Disaffection. 
One is that the King should establish 
himself in the centre of his Army. Could 
there be a worse suggestion ? We all were 
gratified when the Sovereign found it 
possible, once and again, to visit his troops, 

79 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



for we knew the happiness which his 
presence would bring to men who deserve 
all the happiness which they can get. We 
were thankful when he returned in safety ; 
and we know that the place assigned by 
Providence to an English Sovereign is in 
the centre of his people. 

Another suggestion, not much wiser, is 
that the King's personal part in the busi- 
ness of the State should be made more 
conspicuous, and his individual action 
dragged into the " fierce light " of pub- 
licity. Let the answer be given in 
Gladstone's words : " In the ordinary 
administration of the Government the 
Sovereign personally is, so to speak, 
behind the scenes ; performing, indeed, 
many personal acts, but, in each and all 
of them, covered by the advice of Ministers, 
who stand between the august Personage 
and the people. . . . Sole action for the 
Sovereign would mean undefended, unpro- 
tected action ; the armour of irresponsi- 
bility would not cover the whole body 
against sword or spear ; a head would 
So 



REPUBLICANISM 



project beyond the awiiing, and would 
invite a sunstroke." 

My own remedy for the disaffection, less 
or greater, which may have been engen- 
dered by recent circumstances, has already 
been humbly submitted. The only dissen- 
tients from it whom I have discovered 
are those curiously innocent people who 
write to the papers suggesting an alliance 
with an Italian or a French princess, for- 
getting the fundamental fact that for the 
Sovereign or the Heir Apparent to marry 
a Roman Catholic forfeits his right to 
the crown and absolves the English 
people from their allegiance. Let a wiser 
word from one of my correspondents close 
this chapter : — 

The old objection of the influence of the wife's 
relations on affairs of State could hardly apply 
nowadays. A little malice among some sections in 
society would be inevitable ; it would count for nothing 
against the feeling of the mass of the country. 



8i 



X 

ROYALTY 

Some recent remarks of mine about Royal 
alliances have prompted questions. " What 
is Royalty?" asks a perplexed reader. " Is 
there a Royal caste? If so, what are its 
limitations ? How do people get into it ? 
Can they fall out of it ? And if so, 
how ? " To answer these questions with 
precision is impossible ; but to illustrate 
their complexity is easy. We will begin 
at home, and then pursue the subject to 
the Continent. 

In England the sole fountain of honour 
is the Sovereign. All ranks, titles, and 
precedencies are his creations, and all 
questions of Royalty are governed by re- 
lationship to the Crown. Thus we speak 
habitually of " the Royal Family," but the 
phrase is elastic, and is used with' vary- 
82 



ROYALTY 



ing extensions. The larger extension, 
according to Blackstone, includes all those, 
whether male or female, who could, by 
any possibility, inherit the Crown : — " Such 
before the Revolution, were all the de- 
scendants of William the Conqueror, who 
had branched into an amazing extent by 
inter -marriages with the ancient nobility. 
Such, since the Revolution and the Act of 
Settlement, are the Protestant issue of the 
Electress Sophia, no\y comparatively few 
in number, but which, in process of time, 
may possibly be as largely diffused." 
Thus spoke a true prevision ; for, even 
if we omit from the calculation the other 
issue of George III, the descendants, male 
and female, of his granddaughter Queen 
Victoria, would furnish the population of 
a village ; and each of these illustrious 
personages, unless he or she should become 
or should marry a Roman Catholic, is 
in the legal succession to the Throne of 
England. If Queen Victoria's sons had 
died without issue, we should now be 
subjects of the German Emperor. 

83 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Such, then, is the wider extension of 
" the Royal Family " ; the more confined 
sense includes only those who are within 
a certain degree of propinquity to the 
reigning Sovereign, and to whom, on 
account of that propinquity, the law pays 
a peculiar regard. Kinsfolk of the Sove- 
reign outside that degree fall into the 
rank of ordinary subjects. An Act jof 
'Henry VIII assigns places in Parliament 
and at the Privy Council to the sons, 
brothers, uncles, and nephews of the King ; 
but, beyond those degrees, the kinsfolk of 
the Sovereign are entitled to no place or 
precedence except what they may have 
acquired — say, by inheriting a peerage or 
a title. The mere fact of their descent, 
in a more remote degree, from the Sove- 
reign, gives them', in law, no precedence, 
though custom willingly concedes what law 
does not confer—" The Princes of the 
Blood Royal have, as to precedence, a 
movable and not a fixed status ; con- 
stantly shifting with the greater or less 
propinquity to the actual Sovereign " ; 
84 



ROYALTY 

and this status, being] ruled by Act of 
Parliainent, cannot be altered by the Royal 
Prerogative. What, then, is the position 
of a man who, being closely related to 
the Sovereign, is not son, brother, uncle, 
or nephew ? 

The question arose in an acute form 
when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert. 
It was proposed to settle it by Act of 
Parliament, giving him precedence over all 
the Royal Family except the future Prince 
of Wales ; but the difficulties in this way 
of adjustment were so many and so grave 
that the project was dropped. The Queen's 
prerogative could not give him precedence 
in Parliament or in the Privy Council, but 
it was sufficient to give him! precedence 
elsewhere, and the good sense and good 
taste of Society accorded due honour to 
the Prince who shared the life, though 
he could not share the Throne, of the 
Sovereign. Matters of mere title, however, 
are within the discretion of the Crown. The 
sons and daughters of the Sovereign, and 
the children of the Sovereign's sons, are 

85 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

" Royal Highnesses " by birth ; but, when 
we get a httle farther away from the 
Throne, the title of Royal Highness is 
acquired only by favour of the Sovereign. 
William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the 
" Silly Billy " of so many memoirs, though 
he was a nephew of George HI, was not 
a " Royal Highness " till he was made 
such by the King on his marriage with 
the King's daughter. The well -remembered 
and much -beloved Princess Mary, Duchess 
of Teck, being born a niece of William IV, 
was made a " Royal Highness " by her 
cousin <Queen Victoria ; ' and the Queen 
conferred the same honour on Prince 
Christian of Schleswig-Holstein when he 
married Princess Helena, and on Prince 
Henry of Battenberg when he married 
Princess Beatrice. 

But, except by the courtesy of foreign 
Governments, these honours do not " carry " 
beyond the limits of the British Empire, 
and some difficulties connected with the 

' This statement has been disputed, el adJiiic sub 
jiidice lis est. 
86 



ROYALTY 

precedence of Prince Albert when he visited 
foreign Courts induced the Queen to confer 
on him a more distinctive title. In 1857 
Charles Greville, then Clerk of the Council, 
wrote in his diary :— 

The Queen has made Prince Albert ' Prince Consort ' 
by a patent ordered in Council, but this act confers on 
him neither title, dignity, nor privilege. He was 
already as high in England as he can be, assuming 
the Crown Matrimonial to be out of the question : and 
it will give him no higher rank abroad, where our 
acts have no validity. 

In the autumn of the same year Greville 
made this note : — " Prince Albert has been 
to Brussels for the marriage of the Princess 
Charlotte, where he seems to have made 
his first experiment of the effect to be 
obtained from his newly acquired title of 
' Prince Consort of England,' as I see 
he signed the marriage - contract imme- 
diately after the Queen Marie Amelie, and 
before an Austrian Archduke." 

According to English law, no man acquires 
rank fromi his wife. If one of what John 
Bright called " the numerous and respect - 

8; 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



able family of Smith," marries a peeress 
in her ovvii right, he remains Mr. Smith, 
though his son will be a peer when the 
mother dies. Thus, as we have said before, 
marriage with Queen Victoria's daughters 
did not make foreign Princes Royal until 
the Queen conferred the rank, and the 
Dukes of Argyll and Fife were no more 
Royal after their marriages than before. 
The most striking illustration of this rule 
is given in the Queen's own word's :— '" It 
is a strange omission in our Constitution 
that, while the wife of a King has the 
highest rank and dignity in the realm after 
her husband assigned to her by law, the 
husband of a Queen Regnant is entirely 
ignored by the law." 

A woman by marrying acquires her 
husband's rank, and this principle has 
been repeatedly asserted in English his- 
tory. Henry IV married Mary de Bohun ; 
Edward IV married Elizabeth Widville ; 
Richard III married Anne Nevill ; and 
each of these wives shared her husband's 
rank. Henry VIII four times married his 



ROYALTY 

subjects, and, though they were not happy 
wives, they were unquestioned queens. The 
ill-conditioned Prince who became James II 
married the Chancellor's daughter, and the 
observant Pepys noted the superlatively 
royal demeanour of the lady who had 
recently been Anne Hyde — " At White 
Hall we saw the Duchess of York sitting 
in state, while her mother stood beside 
her." Horace Walpole, describing the firet 
visit paid to Strawberry Hill by his niece, 
Lady Waldegrave, after she had married 
the Duke of Gloucester, says : " I flew 
down to the front door to kiss the hand 
of my Royal niece " ; and instances nearer 
to our own time may be found in the 
case of Her Royal Highness the Duchess 
of Albany, who, before her marriage, "was 
Her Serene Highness Princess 'Helen of 
Waldeck-Pyrmont, and, even more con- 
spicuously, in that of our gracious Queen, 
who before she married was Her Serene 
Highness Princess Victoria Mary of Teck. 
So far I have spoken of Royalty as it is 

known to the law and custom of England ; 

89 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

but, when we come to dealing with its 
foreign manifestations, the problem becomes 
more complicated. Here, at any rate, we 
have to deal with an historic, hereditary, 
and continuous line, and with usages 
handed down to us unbroken through the 
vicissitudes of a thousand years. But, when 
we turn to the Continent, we see the 
principle of Royalty agitated and perplexed 
by repeated revolutions. When Napoleon I 
conquered Europe, he redistributed its 
thrones : the descendant of one of his 
marshals is King of Sweden, and the 
House of Bernadotte has married into the 
Royal Family of England. The history, 
ancient and recent, of the Bourbons, whom 
Napoleon dethroned, we all know, and no 
one can dispute their royalty ; but to-day 
England records an equally respectful 
welcome to the descendants of Philippe 
Egalite, and to the august lady who, born 
Eugenic de Teba, shared from 1850 to 
1870 the most splendid throne in Europe, 
and to-day watches, from her quiet retreat 
at Farnborough, the gallantry of France. 
90 



ROYALTY 

What, then, is the reply to the questions 
with which this chapter began ? Royalty is, 
in its wider sense, the whole family, how- 
ever remote, of one who is or has been 
a Sovereign ; in its narrower sense, the 
close kinsfolk of a Sovereign now actually 
on the throne. There is no such thing 
as a Royal " caste," for in England, time 
out of mind, our Sovereigns and Princes 
have intermarried with families not Royal ; 
and, abroad, revolutions and wars and con- 
gresses and treaties have admitted into " the 
Family of Princes " a variety of potentates 
whose ancestors two hundred years ago 
were occupying the lowliest of private 
stations. But for those who are born, 
or have made their way, into the " Family," 
is it possible to fall out of it? In the 
despotically - governed Empires of Austria 
and Russia a morganatic marriage was a 
way of exit ; but English law knows 
nothing of morganatic marriages. Here a 
marriage is lawful or unlawful, and there 
is no middle term. Should H.R.H. Prince 
Cophetua wed a beggar -maid, with the 

91 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

consent of the Crown, Princess Cophetua 
is Royal and their children are heirs to 
the Throne. Should he marry without it 
(as the Duke of Sussex twice did), he 
does not cease to be Royal, but his wife 
does not become Royal, and their children 
have no right of succession. 'AVhen a revo- 
lution upsets a foreign country, and replaces 
its monarchy by a republic, or its kingdom 
by an empire, the deprived Princes are 
Royal or Imperial still. It is difficult to 
become Royal ; but, having once been Royal, 
to become anything else is still more difficult. 

P.S. — The foregoing observations are strikingly illus- 
trated by the King's decision on foreign titles published 
to-day— June 20, 1917. 



92 



XI 

DICTA TORS HIP 

W. G. Ward—" Ideal Ward " of the Oxford 
Movement — was the most enthusiastic of 
ultramontanes . >Wlien a more moderate 
friend complained of the Pope's tendency 
to exalt pious opinions into Dogmas of 
Faith, he replied : " I should like dogmlas to 
be like rolls — a fresh one at breakfast 
every morning." If, for dogmas regulating 
faith, we substitute decrees regulating con- 
duct, we now have exactly the breakfast - 
table which Ward desiderated. We have 
a fresh decree every morning. 

But people who bear my name have 
an hereditary objection to this state of 
things. When a panic-stricken Government 
interfered with the right of public meeting, 
and proposed to abolish habeas corpus, 
Lord John Russell said to the unreformed 
House of Commons : " We talk much — I 

93 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

think a great deal too much — of the wisdom 
of our ancestors. 'I wish we could imitate 
the courage of our ancestors. They were 
not ready to lay their liberties at the foot 
of the Crown upon every vain or imaginary 
alarm." A century later, another Government 
(alarmed, I am bound to say, with better 
reason) produced the Defence of the Realm 
Bill, and, under the pressing exigence of 
war. Parliament passed it into law without 
noticing the extraordinary latitude of a clause 
which placed all civil freedom under the 
domination of executive authority. 

While Lord John Russell protested against 
unnecessary abridgments of liberty, he pro- 
tested not less vigorously against the inter- 
vention of Militarism in political affairs : — 
" A Standing Army which destroyed the 
freedom of England . . . would appear in 
the shape of a Guardian of Order ; it would 
support the authority of the two Houses 
of Parliament ; it would be hostile to none 
but mobs and public meetings, and shed 
no blood except that of labourers and 
journeymen." From such a " Guardian of 
94 



DICTATORSHIP 



Order " all lovers of Freedom must pray 
to be delivered. 

It should be the object of all reasonable 
people to be governed as little as possible. 
The gradual evolution of representative self- 
government has expressed the resolve of 
civilized men to manage their own affairs 
and live their own lives, with' the least 
possible interference from above or from 
outside. To-day the chief opponent of 
this resolve is Bureaucracy, which had long 
been trying to undermine self-government, 
and to set up' the ideal of being governed 
as much as possible, in opposition to the 
older and better ideal o'f being governed 
as little as possible. The war, in addition 
to other and more obvious mischiefs, gave 
Bureaucracy an immense increase of strength. 
Every week sees the creation of some 
fresh office, and of a staff employed in 
executing that office's behests. There are 
some forms of lower life in which, if 
you detach a part from the whole, the 
part detached has the power of living 
and propagating itself. Even so with 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Bureaucracy. The Circumilocution Office is 
broken up into a dozen departments. An 
energetic official is placed at the head of 
each, and goes to work with a will, ful- 
filling Ward's ideal, and issuing decrees, 
like hot rolls, every morning. 

In old days, when the Cabinet system 
was still in force; we knew that the 
Government as a whole was answerable 
for actions done in its name ; and that a 
blunder or a crime committed by one 
department involved the 'fate of the whole 
Cabinet. To-day the oppressed subject 
knows not where to turn. If Mr. Podsnap 
or Mr. Perkup issues an absurd decree, 
or if the Minister for Turnip-tops urges 
a course which the President of the Board 
of Conscription disallows, to whom are 
we to appeal ? If General Sir George Tufto, 
being " the competent military authority," 
forbids Family Prayers, on the ground that 
they may involve seditious proceedings or 
hinder the work of recruiting, can we in- 
voke the Cabinet to defend our religious 
liberties ? It is a dubious outlook, for the 
96 



DICTATORSHIP 



Prime Minister is fully occupied in win- 
ning the war, and his Aaron and Hur 
have not made their fame by championing 
freedom. No one can admire Lord Milner's 
intellect more sincerely than I do ; but 
his intense Germanism (I do not mean 
pro -Germanism) has made him, where 
freedom is concerned, " wrong with the 
intense wrongness which only an honest 
man can achieve, who has taken a false 
turn of thought in the outset, and is 
following it, regardless of consequences." 
Lord Curzon has been my friend for 
forty years ; but to appeal to him on the 
ground that my civil or religious freedom 
was threatened by executive authority would, 
I fear, be about as hopeful an attempt as 
" to rear the jungles of Bengal on Salisbury 
Plain." 

But, though the prospect is thus dis- 
couraging, I must admit that it might 
conceivably be worse. After all, the 
members ot the Cabinet are civilians, and 
civilians, even though they have been 
Pro -Consuls, might yet understand, or 
G 97 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

remember, what Civil Liberty means. Not 
so a military dictator. The military mind 
is constitutionally incapable of conceiving 
of Freedom, except as a pestilent mischief 
to be exterminated by whatever method 
comes most readily to hand. There is no 
need to ransack ancient or modern history 
for illustrations of my contention. At this 
moment, and f6r the last three years, 
the British nation has been struggling with 
all its might against the tyranny which 
German militarism is striving to enforce on 
the world. And yet there are some who say, 
in words or in effect : " Let us set a thief to 
catch a thief — a tyrant to fight tyranny — 
a dictator to resist dictatorship." Sooner 
than lose the war (and by losing the 
war I mean failing to crush Germany) 
I would consent even to this desperate 
expedient ; but in doing so I should feel 
an absolute conviction that, when the war 
was over — even when Berlin was turned into 
a dungheap— the Dictator would still be with 
us. Dictators, whether military or civil, have 
a wonderful power of sticking to their posts. 
98 



DICTATORSHIP 



I began with a name which I at least 
venerate, and with the same name I end. 
When Louis Napoleon was President of 
the French Republic, he asked Lord John 
Russell to visit him at the Tuileries. He 
stuffed the honest English gentleman with 
all sorts of flummery about the national 
call which had summoned him to the Pre- 
sidency ; about the duty which he owed 
to France, and to his name ; and about the 
irksomeness of the burden laid upon him. 
" That burden," he said, " is too heavy 
to be borne except for a very few years ; 
and, when my term of office expires, you 
will see that I shall not offer myself for 
re-election." This, though true to the ear, 
proved false to the sense . In May 1852 
he would have automatically ceased to be 
President. In December 185 1 he com- 
mitted an armed assault on the Constitution 
which he had sworn to uphold ; killed some 
of his opponents and sent the rest to Cay- 
enne ; and established himself in a dictator- 
ship which lasted, with some modifications of 
form, till he surrendered his sword at Sedan. 

99 



XII 
THE WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION 

Lord Palmerston once wrote a very im- 
pertinent letter to Queen Victoria. The 
Queen had desired his attendance at 
Windsor ; and he wrote from his house in 
Hampshire that he exceedingly regretted 
his failure to attend. He had got on 
his horse in Piccadilly, meaning to ride 
to Paddington Station, but by some mistake 
had gone to Waterloo instead, and had 
arrived at Broadlands instead of Windsor. 
There is a cheekiness about this way of 
excusing a breach of duty which justifies 
Disraeli's sneer at Palmerston's demeanour 
as that of *' a favourite footman on easy 
terms with his mistress." But a Liberal 
reviewer, recalling the episode, made a 
doubly inept criticism when he described 
Palmerston's letter as " the most insolent 

lOO 



WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION 

document ever drafted by a member of 
the Whig aristoci-acy." 

In the first place, Palmerston was 
not a Whig. Whether he could be 
rightly said to belong to an aristocracy 
is more disputable. I only know that 
the Whigs, with whom, when it suited 
his purpose, he allied himself, thought him 
very vulgar. But a Whig he was not. 
Gladstone, who did not much like Whig- 
gery, though he often used Whigs, laid it 
down that " to be a Whig, a man must 
be born a Whig." But Palmerston was 
born and bred a Tory, and from 1807 to 
1830 held office in Tory Administrations. 
The remaining thirty-five years of his life 
he spent, for the most part, in Whig 
Administrations, but he was not a Whig. 
The one thing in the world which he 
loved was power, and, as long as this 
was secured, he did not trouble himself 
much about the political complexion of 
his associates. " Palmerston does not care 
how much dirt he eats, so long as it is 
gilded dirt," was Gladstone's verdict ; and, 

101 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

if " gilded dirt " be the right description 
of office procured by flexible politics, Palmer- 
ston ate, in his long career, an extraordinary 
amount of it. 

This, then, was the reviewer's first blunder, 
personal and particular. His second was 
more general, but not less a blunder. The 
" Whig aristocracy " did not " draft insolent 
documents " for the perusal of the Sovereign. 
The Whigs held (as Lord John Russell 
told Queen Victoria) that all rulers are 
liable to be removed for misconduct ; and 
they had acted on that belief, directly 
in 1688, indirectly in 17 14. But, when 
once they had displaced an offending 
dynasty and installed another, they treated 
the occupant of the throne with all tra- 
ditional respect. Not even the mighty 
Chatham, whose hooked nose could be seen 
between his knees when he did obeisance 
to George III, could have comported him- 
self more reverently towards the Crown 
than the Greys and Spencers and Russells 
of the succeeding century. The very 
fact that they had imported the House of 

IQ2 



WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION 

Hanover into this country made the Whigs 
doubly soHcitous that the new dynasty should 
lack nothing of the " divinity " that had 
"hedged" its predecessors. 

The Whigs were originally a group of 
great nobles, in whom the possession of 
rank and wealth had not extinguished the 
love of civil and religious freedom. They 
had little taste for ' revolution, but less 
for tyranny ; and, when the fatuous policy 
of James II convinced them that as long 
as he was on the throne there was no 
security for the old-established freedom of 
the realm, they had no scruple about inviting 
his daughter and son-in-law to take his place. 
At the same time they sedulously abstained 
from rash and unheeded innovation. They 
knew, as Machiavelli had known before 
them, that nothing so much tends to give 
stability to a change in government as 
scrupulous adherence to historic forms and 
venerable institutions. So, instead of indulg- 
ing in raw abstractions and philosophies 
of statecraft, they contented themselves with 
confirming, by solemn statute, the ancient 

103 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

liberties of England, and [protesting against 
the particular violations of those liberties 
which James II had committed. They 
proclaimed to the world that James, having 
broken the understood contract between King 
and people, having violated the fundamental 
laws of the realm, and having withdrawn 
himself out of the kingdom, had abdicated 
the throne ; and they invited William and 
Mary to fill it. 

The fundamental principle of Whiggery 
was resistance to arbitrary power. The very 
phrase has now an archaic sound ; but, when 
it was originally coined, it expressed a very 
real and threatening danger ; and though, 
from the accession of the House of Hanover 
onwards, that danger was sensibly dimin- 
ished, yet the Whigs never lost sight of the 
fact that circumstances might arise which 
would again make resistance a duty. Their 
favourite toast was : " The King, and may 
he never forget those principles which placed 
his family on the throne." They con- 
sistently held and taught the doctrine that 
there must be, in every free State, an 
1 04 



WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION 

extreme remedy against the abuses of 
authority. When Edmund Burke, originally 
a Whig, had been thrown off his mental 
balance by his horror of regicide, he 
made this particular dogma of Whiggery 
the subject of one of liis most vigor- 
ous protests : — " I confess I never liked 
this continual talk of resistance and 
revolution, or the practice of making the 
extreme medicine of the Constitution its 
daily bread. It is like taking periodical 
doses of mercury sublimate. It renders 
the habit of society dangerously valetu- 
dinary." Burke made his great appeal 
" from the new Whigs to the old." A 
Whig who was born in 1792 he would 
have considered a very new Whig indeed. 
Lord John Russell, who was born in that 
year, has never been reckoned among revo- 
lutionary politicians ; but he laid down 
in 1826, and reaffirmed forty years later, 
the doctrine of an " extreme medicine " for 
a possible disorder :— " If the King abuses 
a just, or attempts to exercise an oppres- 
sive, power, the representatives of the 

105 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



people have the right to refuse the money 
required to carry on the government." After 
enlarging on this theme, he continues :— 

This power, it is quite clear, would enable the House 
of Commons, if so disposed, to declare themselves the 
sovereigns, and to take away every efficient prerogative 
from the Crown ; but such is the moderation of the 
English people that they have never desired so for- 
midable an increase of their own power or that of 
their representatives. At the Revolution, when the 
whole question was open, they did not take away a 
single grain of the powers necessary to maintain the 
monarchy. So, at the present day, the true reason 
why the Crown maintains its prerogative unimpaired 
lies in the temper of the nation. The country has a 
deep-rooted affection for kingly government, and 
would highly resent any attempt to change or destroy 
this keystone of the Constitution. 

There spoke the authentic voice of 
Whiggery, and I believe that it was also 
the voice of truth. In spite of what I 
wrote on page 71, there is no general 
desire in England for an alteration in 
the form of government ; but, when we 
look through forms into realities, there seems 
to be a good deal of ignorance about the 
actual working of the Constitution. To 
106 



WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION 



put it plainly, a great many people do 
not know how they are governed. They 
seem to believe that the Sovereign is a 
mere figure-head ; and are half -amazed, half- 
indignant, when they are assured that he 
or she — for I am not thinking of any 
particular Sovereign — exercises any influence 
on the affairs of the State. It is difficult 
to understand how this strange miscon- 
ception of the functions and uses of the 
Crown have survived the publication of 
all the volumes of Royal and Ministerial 
correspondence which have appeared within 
the last fifty years. But so it is, and 
the explanation must be that we are neither 
a reading people nor an imaginative people. 
If we were imaginative, we should be better 
able to realize that some of the most 
important transactions in life go on out 
of sight ; and, if we read, we should 
know that Queen Victoria — to say nothing 
of her successors — exercised for sixty years 
a vigilant, direct, and powerful influence 
on domestic and foreign policy. In the 
transaction of public affairs, the Sovereign 

107 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

has, as Gladstone pointed out, more than 
one advantage over his Ministers. He is 
permanent, while they are fugitive ; he 
speaks from a vantage-ground unapproach- 
ably higher ; he tan take a calm and 
leisurely survey, while they are worried 
with the preparatory stages and the pres- 
sure of countless details. He must therefore 
be a weighty factor in all deliberations of 
State. Every discovery of a blot, which his 
studies in the domain of business enable 
him to make, strengthens his hands and 
enhances his authority. Now all this is 
obviously true, as far as it goes ; but, 
to make it a full presentment of the truth, 
we must recur to that prime creation of 
the Whigs — the doctrine of Ministerial re- 
sponsibility. " There can," said Gladstone, 
" be in England no disloyalty more gross, 
as to its effects, than the superstition which 
affects to assign to the Sovereign a separate, 
and, as far as separate, transcendental, 
sphere of political action. ... In the face 
of the country, the Sovereign and' the 
Ministers are an absolute unity." And 
io8 



WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION 

this unity can only be dissolved by one 
of two occurrences. It may be dissolved 
by the decision of thq Sovereign to change 
his Ministers; or it taay be dissolved 
by the refusal of Ministers to bear re- 
sponsibility for acts of which they dis- 
approve. In either of these contingencies — 
dismissal or resignation — the responsibility 
for a great and critical act falls, for the 
moment, on the Sovereign ; but only for 
the moment. The incoming Minister takes 
over, by his acceptance of office, the respon- 
sibility which the Sovereign has incurred. 
When in 1834 William IV dismissed the 
Government of Lord Melbourne, he acted 
within his constitutional right, and his immu- 
nity was secured by the action of Sir 
Robert Peel in accepting the vacant post. 
When, in 1839, Melbourne resigned, and 
Queen Victoria sent for Peel, she refused 
to take a step — ^the dismissal of the Whig 
ladies of her Court — which Peel considered 
essential to the formation of a stable Govern- 
ment. But the Whig Ministers, though 

they had resigned, were waiting in the 

109 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



background, and, by resuming office, they 
again secured the immunity of the Sovereign. 
I have, of set purpose, chosen two inci- 
dents removed by a long distance of time 
from modern controversies. I might illustrate 
the doctrine of Ministerial responsibility by 
abundant citations from the literature of 
Whiggery ; and I confirm it by yet another 
quotation from one who was not a Whig : — 

The Crown has large prerogatives, endless functions 
essential to the daily action, and even to the life, of the 
State. . . . They are entrusted to men who must be 
prepared to answer for the use they make of them. 
The ring of responsible Ministerial agency forms a 
fence round the person of the Sovereign, which has 
thus far proved impregnable to all assaults.' 



W. E. Gladstone, '' Gleanings," vol. i. 



IIO 



XIII 

FRANCE IN ENGLAND 

England and France are fighting side 
by side against a common foe ; and the 
Republican Band of France has been re- 
ceived with public honours by the Lord 
Mayor of London. > There is nothing very 
sensational in this plain statement of the 
fact ; but its historical implications should 
not be overlooked. 

In October 1 8 1 6 the French Revolution, 
which in its successive phases held Europe 
in awe for a quarter of a century, had 
been laid to rest. Five years before, 
the progress of Bonaparte had seemed 
to Englishmen " as swift and as terrible 
as the lightnings of God." But now 
" the gloom of his glory " no longer " o'er- 
shadowed the earth " ; he was a beaten 

^ Written in October 1916. 

Ill 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

man, caged at St. Helena. The Bourbons 
had returned, as it seemed permanently, 
to the throne of France. By common 
consent people agreed to regard the Revo- 
lution as merely a past event ; and, freed 
at length from the terror which had so 
long obsessed them, they sate down to 
reason quietly about its causes. Some of 
the conclusions at which they arrived 
were quaint enough. Perhaps, after the 
lapse of a century, we are in a better 
position to trace the sequence of events 
which connects the downfall of the 
French Monarchy with the develop- 
ment of constitutional government at 
home. 

The celebrated saying of Napoleon that, 
if Rousseau had never lived, there would 
have been no Revolution, contained, in spite 
of its exaggerated form, an unquestionable 
truth. What distinguishes the French \ 
upheaval from other political movements 
is that it was directed by men who, 
having adopted a speculative conception of 
political right, propagated it with all the 

112 



FRANCE IN ENGLAND 

fanatical enthusiasm and proselytizing 
fervour which one comlmonly associates 
with a religious belief. The sacred oracle 
of these revolutionists w'as the Contrat 
Social of Rousseau, with its fundamental 
distinction between Sovereignty and Govern- 
ment. Sovereignty, according to Rousseau, 
resides inalienably in the whole mass of 
the population, and no Government is legiti- 
mate which does not rest upon the election 
of the whole people. So far, Rousseau's 
teaching accorded with that of English 
Whiggery, but he went a good way farther. 
He taught that no act of even a properly 
constituted Government is valid unless the 
people have directly sanctioned it. Repre- 
sentatives are mere delegates, with no right 
to act or vote except as they are in- 
structed. The utmost that can be said 
of any authority is that it is a provisional 
form of administration, existing until the 
people shall otherwise determine. When- 
ever the people are lawfully assembled in 
a public body, they resume the functions 

of sovereignty ; the jurisdiction of govern - 
H 113 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

ment ceases, and all executive power 
becomes null and void. 

These theories entered into the heart's 
blood of French thought and feeling. 
Rousseau's disciples learned that no 
authority could be legitimate which did |j 
not harmonize with their own transient 
desires ; that political power is not a 
trust, but a right ; that absolute equality 
is the first condition of good government ; 
and that Constitutions can safely be re- 
arranged on grounds of abstract theory, 
without reference to histoiy, tradition, racial 
characteristics, or differentiating circum- 
stances. The full significance of these 
theories was scarcely perceived until a 
group of men, more desperate than their 
teacher, translated them' into practice. 
Wlien that was done the effect was start- 
ling, was universal, and — what is more- 
was permanent. In 1816 Louis XVIII 
seemed to have restored his dynasty. In 
1887 tne Due d'Aumale said to the present 
writer : " No member of my family will 
ever again sit on the throne of France. A 
114 



FRANCE IN ENGLAND 

capable Bonaparte might have a chance ; 

but what I expect is a succession of 

RepubHcs." 

The intellectual unsettlement which 
heralded the French Revolution was 
promoted by the study of those systems 

of politics and philosophy which Voltaire 
had learned in England, and which, on his 
return to France, he naturalized among his 
countrymen. The impulse started from 
England, and to England it returned. 
The forces which revolutionized France re- 
acted on the internal system' of the country 
from which they had been derived. The 
Revolution influenced English history, in 
the latter years of the eighteenth century, 
more powerfully than any other event ; it 
gave a completely new direction to the 
policy of Pitt ; it shattered and rendered 
ineffectual for a whole generation one of 
the two great parties in the State ; and 
it determined, for a like period, the char- 
acter and complexion of our foreign policy. 
The capture of the Bastille was an act 
so startling and so dramatic that it in- 

"5 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



stantly arrested public attention, and the 
events which immediately followed in rapid 
and striking succession intensified and sus- 
tained the excitement and the interest. All 
over the country those events produced 
their immediate and natural effect. Enemies 
of religious establishments took courage 
from the downfall of established religion 
in France. Enemies of monarchy rejoiced 
in the formal and public degradation of 
a King and Queen, Those who had long 
been labouring in the cause of Parlia- 
mentary reform saw, with glee, their prin- 
ciples carried to their utmost limits, and 
expressed in the most uncompromising 
terms, in the French Declaration of Rights, 
and practically applied in the constitution 
of the Sovereign Body in France. 

Serious advocates of Repubhcan institu- 
tions, mere lovers of change and excitement, 
secret sympathizers with lawlessness and 
violence, sedentary theorists, reckless adven- 
turers, and local busybodies, associated them- 
selves in the endeavour to popularize the 
French Revolution in England and to 
ii6 



FRANCE IN ENGLAND 

imbue the English mind with congenial 
sentiments. The flame of freedom spread 
far and wide, through high and low. The 
Dukes of Norfolk, Richmond, and Bedford, 
Lord Lansdowne and Lord Stanhope, held 
language about the Sovereignty of the 
People, such as filled the reverent and 
orderly mind of Burke with astonishment 
and misgiving. The Revolution Society, 
founded to commemorate the great doings 
of 1688, corresponded with the lovers of 
freedom in France, and proffered its alliance 
in a revolutionary compact which was to 
embrace all Europe . 

Amidst all this hurly-burly, Pitt, who, 
whatever else may be said of him, was a 
very great ruler, maintained a steady and 
cautious reserve. Probably he foresaw his 
opportunity in the hopeless disruption of 
his opponents. That disruption was not 
long delayed, and when it came it rent in 
twain the party of Progress, and retarded 
the development of English liberty by at 
least twenty years. But the spirit which 
makes Revolutions is indestructible, though 

117 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

it waxes and wanes, embodies itself in 
various forms, and works by manifold 
methods. To-day Republican France is the 
sworn ally and the honoured guest of a 
land which has learnt to regard the Crown 
as the consecrated symbol of its political 
freedom. 



u8 



II 

IDEALS AND WAR 



CONSCIENCE AND CASUISTRY 

Conscience is, or should be, one of the 
commonplaces of existence. Yet whenever 
it makes a public appearance in the affairs 
of practical life, it is regarded as some- 
thing new and strange— even offensive. 
Clumsy satirists make gibes about " the 
Nonconformist Conscience " or " the Con- 
scientious Objector," and write of con- 
science as if it were necessarily a fraud, 
or at best a fad. To remfedy this dis- 
ordered thinking or feeling is the office 
of Casuistry. The word has an evil sound 
in the ears of the average Englishman, 
and that this is so is a matter for regret ; 
for the thing which, for want of a better 
name, we call Casuistry, is an absolutely 
necessary part of the equipment of every 
one who " makes his moral being his 
prime care." 

121 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

My Roman Catholic friends must not 
be angry if I quote the opinion that 
" great discredit has been brought upon 
Casuistry by the overminuteness with which 
it has been pursued in the Works of the 
Jesuits," and which has created in the 
popular mind the impression that Casuistry 
is merely a sophistication of the plain laws 
of right and wtong. 

That Casuistry may be thus perverted 
I do not deny ; but, in itself, it is simply 
the Science of Duty. Jeremy Bentham, 
who hated priestcraft and loved alarming 
words, called it Deontology ; but he meant 
the same thing. The word is derived 
from the Latin Casus, and epitomizes what 
is conveyed by Casus Conscientlcs—Cases 
of Conscience. The Casuist is the person 
who studies, and attempts to decide, such 
cases. Every one who acts conscientiously 
must be a Casuist on his oWn account, 
and the degree in which he is so will 
depend partly on the circumstances of his 
life, partly on the keenness or dullness 
of his conscience, partly on his intellectual 

122 



CONSCIENCE AND CASUISTRY 



capacity to see things as they are and 
not as they seem' to be. The laws of 
reason, the laws of society, the laws of 
revealed religion are the chief authorities, 
external to the intuition of Conscience, by 
which the course of duty in difficult cases 
must be settled. For although, in a simple 
life, duties are correspondingly simple, and 
the intuition of Conscience needs little help ; 
yet there are few lives so free from' com- 
plexity that puzzling questions of duty do 
not occasionally arise ; and the more complex 
the life the more numerous must be its 
problems. Where duty is not self-evident, 
it can only be ascertained by a careful 
process of weighing one consideration 
against another. Take the most familiar 
of all illustrations : Is it a duty under 
all circumstances to speak the truth ? 
Yes. But suppose a friend is sitting in 
your garden, and a lunatic armed with a 
carving-knife comes into the room and says : 
" I am sent by God to kill So-and-so- 
do you know where he is?" (and this 
is not an imaginary illustration). Is it a 

123 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

duty to reply : " Yes', I know he is in 
the garden"? Most people would say No; 
but whether they said No or Yes they 
would be practising Casuistry. 

The principle which underlies the enquiry 
stretches far and wide. George Herbert 
says :— 

Every one hath not digested, when it is a sin to take 
something for monc}' lent, and when not ; when it 
is a fault to disclose another's faults, and when not ; 
when the affections of the soul in desiring or procuring 
increase of means or honour be a sin of covetousness 
or ambition, and when not ; when the appetites of 
the body in eating, drinking, sleeping, and the like 
be sins of gluttony, drunkenness, sloth, and when not ; 
and so in many circumstances of actions. 

The science of duty, or Casuistry, is 
simply the application of general laws to 
particular cases ; and it is a science which 
every one, who is not content to live his 
moral life at haphazard, is bound prac- 
tically, though perhaps informally, to study. 
It is perilous, as Bishop Westcott said, 
to " trust to an uncultivated notion of duty 
for an improvised solution of unforeseen 
difficulties." The words, indeed, are modem, 
124 



CONSCIENCE AND CASUISTRY 



but the samie thought has always been 
present to grave minds, and has made a 
deep mark on EngUsh Hterature. Among 
our Enghsh writers on Casuistry were 
William Perkins— a name now wholly 
forgotten— and Joseph Hall, not widely 
remembered. To them succeeded John 
Donne and Robert Sanderson and George 
Herbert and Richard Hooker. Jeremy 
Taylor, gathering all that Was best from 
his predecessors of every age and tongue, 
and adding to it the treasures of his own 
experience and imagination, enriched our 
literature with his Ductor Dubltantium, or 
The Rule of Conscience in all her General 
Measures. Two centuries later Frederick 
Denison Maurice became Professor of 
" Casuistry, Moral Theology, and Moral 
Philosophy " at Cambridge, and did all 
that genius and devotion could do to rescue 
the Science of Duty from the discredit 
into which it had sunk iu. an age of 
moral indifference. 

Probably those people who read treatises, 
whether ancient or ntodem, on Casuistry,, 

125 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



are extremely few ; but no one who knows 
anything about the inner Hves and hidden 
difficulties of his fellow-men can doubt 
that the application of the general laws 
of moral duty to particular cases is the 
cause of perplexities, and to sensitive 
natures of agonies, all the more torment- 
ing because generally unacknowledged. We 
need not go to books for illustrations of 
my meaning, A politician finds himself 
opposed to his party on a particular issue 
— War, or Home Rule, or Disestablish- 
ment, or whatever else it may be. Is 
it his duty to suppress his convictions on 
the particular point, and support the party 
with which on the whole he agrees ? Or 
ought he to ally himself with the party 
which he believes to be, on the whole, 
wrong, for the sake of one point on which 
it is right ? A young journalist, with his 
daily bread to make, finds that the paper 
for which he works has changed its atti- 
tude on some vital question. Should he 
stifle his conscience and go on support- 
ing what in his heart he believes to be the 
126 



CONSCIENCE AND CASUISTRY 

wrong cause ? A man who had once borne 
the King's Commission was forced to take 
a humble job in a stockbroker's office. 
The office was in a block of flats ; a rival 
stockbroker had the flat below. The new 
clerk found that he was expected to pause 
on his frequent goings up and down, and 
to hnger about the rival's door on the 
off-chance of catching a casual word from 
within which might be useful to his em- 
ployer by disclosing the rival's operations. 
To resign meant ruin for mother, brothers, 
and sisters . What was the course of duty ? 
Alas ! I am no Duct or Dubitantium, 
and I can only reply, in the rriost general 
term's, that the hard way is generally the 
right way. It was by gallantly breasting 
the Hill of Difficulty that Christian 
reached the chamber called Peace, whose 
window opened towards the Sunrising : — 

This Hill, though high, I covet to ascend ; 

The difliculty will not me offend ; 

For I perceive the way to life lies here ; 

Come, pluck up, Heart ; let's neither faint nor fear : 

Better, tho' difticult, th' right way to go, 

Than wrong, though easie, where the end is wo. 

127 



II 

CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE 

For a paper which will be read in Holy 
Week there can be no more appropriate 
subject than Conscience.' The highest 
exemplification of conscience which the 
world has ever seen was made at this 
season, and it sheds dignity on : the 
humblest and even the most erroneous 
attempts to do what seems right without 
regard to consequences. 

The Christian Church is founded on the 
action of conscience. To burn a pinch of 
incense in honour of the Olympian deities 
must have seemed a very small thing to 
the ordinary pagan, but conscience for- 
bade the Roman Christians to do it ; and 
so the blood of the martyrs became seed. 
Where the Christian populations writhe 
under the domination of Mohammedanism, 

' Written in March 19 17. 
128 



CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE 

" many a tender maid, at the threshold of 
her young life, has gladly tnet her doom, 
when the words which accepted Islam' would 
have made her in a moment a free and 
honoured member of a dominant commu- 
nity." She followed conscience, and paid 
the forfeit. Nearer home, men and women 
and boys and girls liave died by fire 
sooner than accept a spiritual domination 
against which their conscience rebelled ; 
and, in times more recent and rather 
more humane, people whose reading of 
the New Testament was different from 
mine have faced imprisonment and the 
" spoiling of their goods " sooner than 
contribute to the support of a Church 
which in their judgment taught error. It 
would require, not an article but a veryj 
large book, to narrate the history of con- 
science and the courage which it inspires, 
and, if that book were faithfully written, 
there could be no nobler reading. 

But every one must have observed that 

the mere mention of the word " conscience " 

— still more, the resolve to act on it when 

I 129 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



it runs counter to popular prejudice — always 
excites an insolent^ fury in those whose 
sole guide is convention. .When the Non- 
conformists declined to follow the leader- 
ship of a politician who had conspicuously 
offended against the moral law^ men of 
the world, as they are called, poured 
angry scorn on " the Nonconformist Con- 
science." W'hen Dr. Clifford and his 
followers announced themselves as " Passive 
Resisters " to the Education Act, the scruple 
of conscience which dictated their resistance 
was made the subject of imbecile jesting. 
And now, when a man declares that he 
is a " Conscientious Objector " to military 
service, the epithet, though it may be abso- 
lutely just, is invariably treated as' a 
synonym for hypocrisy and humbug. Eor 
my own part, I have always held (and 
said as long ago as 1883) that "there 
are some causes, such as life and home 
and freedom, for which the gentlest and 
most humane of men must be prepared 
to draw the sword ",; and to this belief 
I hold unfalteringly. But I know by 
130 



CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE 

experience that men fully as well entitled 
to credence as myself affirm that their 
conscience teaches thetn otherwise ; and 
to coerce them into doing what their con- 
science forbids, or to punish them for 
not doing it, seems to be an act which 
befits a Ccesar or a Sultan rather than 
a Christian Government. I must confess 
that, though I think the " Conscientious 
Objector " entirely wrong, I have nothing 
but respect for the courage with which he 
submits to the physical and moral conse- 
quences of his action. However grav^e may 
be his error, such a man has conspicuously 
vindicated himself against the charge of 
cowardice . 

But that numerous crowd whose one 
notion of government is bullying are apt 
to reply : " How are we to know that the 
man is really obeying conscience ? Per- 
haps all the time he is only trying to 
save his skin." Certainly it would need 
omniscience to be absolutely certain in 
this, as in any other case. But, when 
Parliament was stripping us of our liber- 

131 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

ties, I thought that it promised an elaborate 
system of judicial enquiries, by which the 
honest scruples of conscience were to be 
distinguished from cowardly evasions of 
public duty. I confess that if I knew 
a man who had, in old time, held such 
hideous language as — " What we want is 
a jolly good war," and if I now saw him 
sueing for exemption on the ground that 
he objected to killing his fellow -men, I 
should without hesitation overrule his plea 
of conscience. But, where; a man can 
show me that, before 1 9 1 4, he had held 
that all war is unlawful, I should say : 
"You have proved your case. It is not 
for us who think otherwise to coerce you. 
Go in peace." 

To illustrate my meaning, let me turn 
from the grave concerns of adult citizen- 
ship to a wise word of counsel which was 
urged long ago on boys. " As to fighting," 
said Tom Hughes, " keep out of it if you 
can, by all means. When the time comes, 
if it ever should, that you have to say 
' Yes ' or ' No ' to a challenge to fight, say 
132 



CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE 

' No ' if you can — only take care you make 
it clear why you say ''No.' It's a proof of 
the highest courage if done from' true 
Christian motives. It's quite right and 
justifiable if done from a simiple aversion 
to physical pain and danger. But don't 
say ' No ' because you fear a licking, and 
say or think it's because you fear God, 
for that's neither Christian nor honest." 
Which things are an allegory ; and it carries 
a clear lesson for those who feel disposed 
to decline their share in that burden of 
military service which the country has laid 
upon them. 

Cardinal Newman once magnificently said 
that Conscience is a King in its imperious - 
ness, a Prophet in its predictions, a Priest 
in its benedictions and anathemas. If we 
are wise, we shall submit to that imperious - 
ness, gi\'e heed to those predictions, desire 
those benedictions, and dread those ana- 
themas. But while we thus profess to be 
disciples of conscience, we must be careful 
to remember that the discipleship of others 
may be foully as genuine as our own, 

I v^ 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

though" it wear a different garb and speak 
with an unfamiliar accent. Our duty is 
to act, according to the best light we can 
get ; but we must remember that even 
the lights to us which seem clearest, are 
only " broken lights," and that the glib 
condemnation of others who see differently 
is as unwise as it is unjust. " Never," said 
Gladstone, " never let it be forgotten 
that there is scarcely a single moral action 
of a single man,, of which' other men 
can have such" a knowledge, in its ulti- 
mate grounds, its surrounding incidents, and 
the real determining causes of its merits, 
as to warrant their pronouncing a con- 
clusive judgment on it." Those are weighty 
words, appropriate to all times when passion 
is aroused, and to this time in particular. 
Just after I had written the foregoing 
paragraph, I found (in Lady Newton's 
delightful book. The House of Lyme) these 
admirable words of John Bradshawe, the 
Regicide : — 

As for the Quakers ... I have but one rule for 
them, and f^r all that come before mee as Judge. 
134 



CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE 



And that is the equall iust and impartiall Law of the 
Land, which directs and commands hke Justice in Hke 
cases to all sortes of persons, And therein Quakers 
have their share as well as others. 



135 



Ill 

THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY^ 

My text is taken from the writings of a 
political genius, whose opinions I did not 
share, but whose gifts I profoundly admire. 
Lord Beaconsfield says, in his fascinating 
tale of Sybil : — 

We live in an afje when to be young and to be 
indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must 
prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the 
Future are represented by suffering millions, and the 
Youth of a Nation are the Trustees of Posterity. 

If these words were true in 1845, t^^y 
are doubly and trebly true to-day. " The 
Trustees of Posterity " — ^mark the phrase. 
I propose to enquire what characteristics 
should distinguish the young citizen who 
takes his citizenship and its possibilities 

' A Presidential Address to the " Young Britons " 
Society. 
136 



THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY 

seriously, and aims at becoming, as Lord 
Beaconsfield said, a Trustee of Posterity. 
For my own part, I have not the slightest 
doubt about the characteristic which I should 
place in the forefront. The young citizen 
must be, first and foremost, a lover of 
Freedom — Heaven's best gift to the individual 
and to society. The liberty, which Milton 
loved, " to know, to utter, and to argue 
freely"— the liberty to act in things 
secular and sacred, in public and in private, 
according to one's own conviction of what 
is right — is the one incomparable good of 
life, the one priceless possession for which 
no earthly equivalent can be found, no 
conceivable boon be taken in exchange. 
And of this liberty the young citizen must 
accept only one limitation, and that is 
that the exercise of his own freedom shall 
not infringe the freedom of another. In 
that single, simple condition he recognizes 
the law which regulates, while it sanctions, 
the awful though glorious prerogative of Free 
Will. That one restriction the young citizen 
must admit as belonging to the very nature 

137 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

of liberty and to the elementary necessities 
of human society. He admits this one, 
but he will admit no more. Loving 
liberty himself, he desires to see it " in 
widest commonalty spread " among all his 
fellow-men, irrespective of race, colour, or 
creed. 

Second only to Love of Freedom, we place 
in this ideal portraiture Faith in Progress. 
To believe that the world is going from 
bad to worse ; that each age and each 
year loses some old good and brings some 
fresh evil ; that every change in life, in 
thought, in society, is a deterioration ; that 
novelty is synonymous with' mischief ; and 
that all apparent progress is essential retro- 
gression — this may be a suitable creed for 
the aged and the timid, for jaundiced 
visions, and faded hopes, and failing health, 
and waning intellect ; but Surely it is no 
gospel for young and vigorous and aspiring 
minds, for resolute wills and hopeful hearts, 
and natures which believe in and long 
to prove their own high capacities. 

To believe that " the great mundane move- 
138 



THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY 

merit, " as Matthew Arnold called it, is on 
the whole towards good ; that Christianity 
is not a colossal failure ; that civilization 
is not a heartless sham ; that, under the 
influence of both, the world is gradually 
but surely passing on towards a better 
age, and that we, in our several degrees 
and stations, can do something to accelerate 
its progress — this is a sentiment which en- 
nobles human existence. This answers the 
question: "Is life worth living?" This, 
more than any other principle, except, per- 
haps, the kindred passion for freedom, has 
characterized in every age the gallant and 
generous souls who have led the great 
onward march of redeemed humanity. 

We have spoken of Freedom and' of 
Progress. There is something which is 
indispensable to both. A Trustee of Pos- 
terity must be a disciple of Order. He 
knows that, without order, the liberty of 
the stronger will inevitably and fatally over- 
ride the liberty of the weaker, and thereby 
set at naught his primary canon — that one 
man's freedom must not infringe the freedom 

139 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

of his brother-man. He knows that, without 
order, the progress in which he longs to 
assist will be, not a rhythmical m'arch, but 
a riotous hustle, in which the weakest 
must go to the wall. Order is a con- 
dition precedent both to liberty and to 
progress . 

Closely allied to the Love of Order 
is the Spirit of Reverence. To a generous 
nature, reverence is as natural as the passion 
for freedom or the impulse of progress. 
Our young citizen must be always on his 
guard against that miserable vanity which 
attempts to magnify itself by depreciating 
all that has hitherto claimed the homage 
and the admiration of mankind. He knows 
that there is much, even for the youngest 
and cleverest of us, to learn from what 
" larger minds have thought out in calmer 
ages "—from " the long result of time " — 
from the general tendency and drift of 
human thought and experience. He reveres 
all human excellence. He recognizes the 
sign -manual of Heaven in human intel- 
lect. He sees the lineaments of a diviner 
140 



THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY 



nature than his own in human goodness. 
Industry, and energy, and courage, and 
patience, independence of character, free- 
dom of judgment, gentleness, self-control, 
self-sacrifice— the dogged labour which gives 
a lifetime to an obscure but beneficent 
work ; the flash of genius which, in a 
sudden moment, lights the path to fame — 
these are the qualities, these the attributes, 
which attract the homage of the young 
citizen. But, with his whole heart, he spurns 
and scorns the false gods of this world 
which cry aloud for his worship. He has 
no homage for wealth, except as a proof 
of industry ; nor for rank, except as the 
guinea-stamp of superior merit. He has 
no reverence for man-made dogmas, foisted 
by pious fraud on ignorance and credulity. 
He has no respect for pretentious self- 
assertion. He will not bow the knee to 
any reputation, however high its pedestal 
in the world's temple, unless he is per- 
suaded that it has a moral title to stand 
where it is. He claims the right to judge, 
by his own conscience and reason, every 

141 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



demand which is made upon his reverence. 
But, when once that judgment is satisfied, 
he has reverence in abundant store for 
the object which is found worthy to receive 
it. He knows that hero-worship is the 
most graceful privilege of youth", and 
he enjoys it unsparingly. He " lives by 
admiration," as well as " by hope and 
love." 

Love of freedom, contempt for false pre- 
tensions, worship of intellect — these combine 
to produce belief in Equality. The human 
soul, made in the image of God, is the 
one real object of reasonable reverence. 
This reverence the young citizen pays. He 
hates all artificial barriers between class 
and class, the spirit of caste, the deifi- 
cation of selfishness. He loves his brothers 
and sisters in the human family. He 
aims at Social Service. And the ideal of 
social service is, first, to lighten the load of 
existence for those thronging millions whose 
one experience of life is a protracted 
suffering ; and then, as Wordsworth says, 
" to add sunshine to daylight by making 
142 



THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY 



the happy happier." However humble his 
station, however circumscribed his oppor- 
tunities, the young citizen can always find 
some sort of social service ready to his 
hand. The poor, the weak, the hungry, 
the untaught, the overworked — all these send 
up their bitter cry, "How long?" and, 
in ministering to them, the young citizen 
knows that he is making his definite, 
though perhaps unnoticed, contribution to 
the social redemption of humanity. Truly 
said George Eliot—" The growing good of 
the world is partly dependent on unhistoric 
acts ; and that things are not so ill with 
you and me as they might have been is 
half owing to the number who lived faith- 
fully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited 
tombs." 

And here let me remark in passing that 
there is one clear, easy, and obvious depart- 
ment of social service. Sanitary reform 
is the first step towards securing happiness 
and health and length of days for those 
who, by their daily labour of hand or 
head, principally maintain the pre-eminence 

143 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



of the race. The young citizen — the Trustee 
of Posterity — is impatient of a state of 
society in which heakhy dwelHngs, and 
unadulterated food, and pure water, and 
fresh air, are the monopolies of the rich ; 
and he can never rest till he sees, in 
the neglected village or the squalid back- 
settlements of the town in which he lives, 
his own efforts contributing, however feebly, 
to this form of special service. He must 
do his part towards abolishing filth and eradi- 
cating disease, and giving free scope to those 
beneficent laws of Nature, which, " though 
they were not revealed amid the thunders 
of Sinai, are not less the commandmenits 
of God." 

This conviction of the sacredness of human 
life — this belief that to maintain his own 
life and the lives of others in health and 
vigour is a paramount duty — naturally 
leads our young citizen to a very definite 
conclusion on the great subject of Peace 
and War. He knows that we do not 
necessarily sin against the sacredness of 
human life when we strike down a foe in 
144 



THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY 

battle, any rrijore than when we consign a 
criminal to execution. He knows that there 
are causes, such as life, and home, and 
freedom, for which' the gentlest and the 
most humane of men must be prepared 
to draw the sword,' But he is scrupu- 
lously anxious that the sword should never 
be lightly drawn. He will question with 
himself, once and again, whether any war 
which he is asked to sanction or support 
is really a just and necessary undertaking. 
He believes that the ruler of' mfen, be 
he sovereign or statesman, who kindles 
war for selfish or dynastic ends, or for 
any miserable enterprise of annexation or 
self-aggrandizement, incurs an amount of 
guilt too terrible to contemplate. Not for 
an instant is he dazzled by the glitter of 
arms, or seduced from his calmer judg- 
ment by " the pomp and circumstance of 
glorious war." He remembers the words 
of the great American General to the 

^ This Address was delivered long before the 

present war began, and I reprint it for that reason. — 
G. W. E. R. 

K 145 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



military students : " Boys, you think war 
is all glory ; I tell you it is all hell . 
He knows that it is a hell which brave 
and good men must sometimes be prepared 
to face ; but it must be faced earnestly, 
resolutely, reverently, as men face death 
and eternity. What he feels for himself 
he feels for his country. He' has no 
ambition that England should figure as 
the Swashbuckler of Europe. Rather it 
is his glory to see her lead the way 
in the enterprises of peace, in the sciences 
which prolong life and the arts which 
beautify it, and in the educative work 
of rational self-government . 

I have spoken so far of the young citi- 
zen's duty to others. But he has a duty 
to himself, and this naturally falls into 
three divisions, corresponding to the tri- 
partite constitution of human nature — ^body, 
mind, and soul. 

I . The young citizen recognizes his duty 
to his body. He will strive to keep it, 
as nearly as may be, in a state of physi- 
cal perfection. To this the reasonable use 
146 



THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY 



of athletics will greatly contribute ; and 
remember that athletic training means also 
moral discipline. On this point listen to 
a word of guidance from St. Paul, who, 
like all effective teachers, illustrated his 
lessons by reference to the lives and habits 
of his hearers. Writing to his friends at 
Corinth, where the athletic games of the 
ancient world were brought to their highest 
perfection, he thus urges temperance and 
self-control (I quote from the Revised 
Version ):—" Know ye not that they which 
run in a race run all, but one receiveth 
the prize? Even so run that ye may 
attain. And every one that striveth in 
the games is temperate in all things. Now 
they do it to receive a corruptible crown ; 
but we an incorruptible. I therefore so 
run, as not uncertainly : so fight I, as 
not beating the air ; but I buffet my 
body, and bring it into bondage, lest by 
any means, after I have preached to others, 
I myself should be rejected." 

Fashioning himself on this precept of a 
man who, whatever else he was or did, 

147 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

has made a permanent mark on the higher 
life of the world, the young citizen will 
do his best, by vigorous self-discipline, 
to make his body not a master, but a 
servant — the pliant instrument of a high 
purpose, a fit habitation for the moral 
and intellectual being that dwells within. 
2. The young citizen has a duty to his 
mind. He reveres his intellect as a sacred 
trust. He nourishes it with the best that 
has been said and written. He corrects 
its imperfections. He strengthens its weak 
points. He seeks to fire and animate it 
by contact with minds greater than itself. 
He recognizes the fact that education is 
no mere matter of schooling or book- 
work ; but a process which begins with 
the dawn of understanding and is never 
complete on this side of the grave, inas- 
much as human life is inexplicable unless 
it is itself one long education for a better 
and fuller being. Wdth an intellect thus 
sedulously tended and disciplined, with' a 
range of knowledge thus constantly widen- 
ing, with powers thus daily expanding to 
148 



THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY 

a richer and larger life, the young citizen 
goes boldly forward amid shoals and rocks 
and contrary winds, knowing that, in intellect 
and conscience, he holds the golden charts 
which never yet failed the diligent and 
courageous mariner. 

3. And the young citizen has a duty to 
his soul. 

This discourse would be glaringly in- 
complete if I omitted to S0,y a word about 
Citizenship and Religion. 

Whatever be the form of religious pro- 
fession to which the young citizen — ^the 
Trustee of Posterity — ^attaches himself ; how- 
ever keenly he may feel the " blank mis- 
givings of a creature, moving about in 
worlds not reahzed " ; this, at any rate, he 
will never do— ^he will never scoff at the 
idea of Religion. He will not ignorantly 
contemn that which has been, in every 
age, the guide in life and the strength 
in death of thousands of the world's best 
heroes. He will never dogmatize where 
Revelation is silent and Reason can only 
walk by tentative guesswork ; nor strive 

149 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



to enforce on others the creed which he 
has himself accepted. He will ponder 
deeply the significance of those two splendid 
texts :— " Ye shall know the truth, and the 
truth shall make you free " : " Where 
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 
He will seek, with all diligence, a light for 
his own path, and conviction for his own 
intellect ; but he will gladly concede to his 
fellow -m'cn the same unrestricted right of 
reasonable self -guidance which he claim's for 
himself, and will walk, not only in humility 
and purity, but in charity with all the 
world. And if, as he recalls the great 
triumphs for mercy and civilization which 
Christianity in its heroic days has won, 
he sometimes feels a not unreasonable 
impatience at the present spectacle of 
Churches untrue to their faith, and lives 
which have fallen so far below their type, 
and feeble efforts for human good and 
indifference to human wretchedness ; then 
he will bethink him that, after all, the 
fault may be in the generation and the 
men rather than in the faith and the 
150 



THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY 

system ; and he will cry with Charles 
Kingsley — a man whose whole nature was 
stirred by the social and religions ques- 
tionings of his own time : — 

Wake again, Teutonic father-ages, 

Speak again, beloved primaeval creeds ; 

Flash ancestral spirit from your pages. 
Wake the drowsy age to worthy deeds. 

Tell us how of old our saintly mothers 

Schooled themselves by vigil, fast, and prayer ; 

Learned to love, as Jesus loved l:)efore them, 

While they bore the cross which poor men bear. 

Tell us how our stout crusading fathers 

Fought and died for God and not for gold ; 

Let their love, their faith, their boyish daring, 
Distance-mellowed, gild the days of old. 

The subject expands before us, and we 
must hasten to a close. It will not be 
supposed that I intend the sketch which 
I have placed before you for a finished 
portrait. I offer it rather as a rough, 
though I hope not inaccurate outline, which 
you must fill in and colour for your- 
selves. 

151 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

And now you will ask, To what does 
all this tend? The character has been 
sufficiently indicated — in what is it to issue? 
Our young citizen has good gifts and great 
opportunities ; what is he to do with them ? 

Let me answer, in the first place, by 
negatives. There are some things which 
he most certainly will not do. He will 
not sacrifice his life and powers and aspira- 
tions to the Moloch of money -making. He 
will never regard poverty as a disgrace, 
or riches as a distinction. He will em- 
bark on no enterprise— political, commer- 
cial, professional — which" he cannot reconcile 
with his notions of duty and honour. He 
will consider no occupation common or 
unclean or beneath his dignity, unless it 
implies dishonourable or immoral conditions. 
He will never content himself with a career 
of aimless idleness, " sitting down at life's 
banquet, and getting up without paying 
the reckoning." If circumstances give him 
immunity from daily toil, he will recognize 
in that immunity a special call to some 
voluntary work for his fellow -men, and 
152 



THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY 

will sacrifice leisure and means to its fulfil- 
ment. If, on the other hand, circum- 
stances bind him to active pursuits, he 
will carefully choose the work for which 
his peculiar powers seem best to fit him, 
and in which his moral nature will have 
fairest play. The work once chosen will 
be steadily pursued and honestly wrought 
with all his energies, but will never be 
permitted to engross his heart, or deaden 
his sympathies, or degenerate into an 
organized selfishness. ^Whatever be his 
handicraft, or trade, or profession, the 
young citizen will remember that he is 
something else, and something more im- 
portant than craftsman, or tradesman, or 
professional man. He will recollect that 
he is a member of the human family, 
and that every child of Adam's kin has 
a claim on his sympathy and goodwill. 
But a vague cosmopolitanism will not satisfy 
him. He will bear in mind, every hour 
of his life, at play as well as at work, 
in society as well as in church, that he 
is a citizen of a great nation, and that 

153 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



the enduring greatness of that nation must 
be built, not on the abundance of its 
material resources, but on the honour and 
purity and courage of its sons. His is 
that truest and holiest patriotism which 
strives to express the love of country, not 
by bluster or swagger or military vain- 
glory, but by the sedulous cultivation in 
ourselves and in others of the " righteous- 
ness " which " exalteth a nation." 

" Here and here did England help me ; how can I 

help England ? " — Say, 
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God. to 

praise and pray. 

The question was asked by a poet who 
is one of our national glories, and a not 
less glorious genius gave the answer in 
prose. Said John Ruskin to the Under- 
graduates of Oxford : — 

There is a destiny now possible to ns, the highest 
ever set before a nation to be accepted or refused. 
We are still undcgcnerate in race — a race mingled 
of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute 
in temper, l^ut still have the hrmness to govern and 
the grace to obey. We have been taught a religion 
154 



THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY 

of pure mercy, which we must either now tinally 
betray or learn to defend by fuliilHng. And we are 
rich in an inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us 
through a thousand years of noble history, which it 
should be our daily thirst to increase witli splendid 
avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet 
honour, should be the most offending souls alive. 
... It is for you, youths of England, to make yoiu' 
country for all the world a source of light, a centre 
of peace ; mistress of learning and of the arts ; 
faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of 
irreverent and ephemeral visions ; faithful servant of 
time-tried principles, under temptation from fond 
experiments and licentious desires ; and, amidst the 
cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, wor- 
shipped in her strange valour of Goodwill towards 
Men. 

And now you will understand why I 
have called my discourse " The Trustees 
of Posterity " ; for, if I have not utterly 
failed in the task which I proposed to 
myself, I have shown that you, young 
citizens of the ' present hour, are, in a 
very real sense. Trustees for the greatness 
and happiness and Christian honour of 
England in the years that are to come — 

And meanwhile, if these hours are dark, as indeed 
in many ways they are, at least do not let us sit 

155 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



deedless, like fools, and line gentlemen, thinking the 
common toil not good enough for us, and beaten by 
the muddle ; but rather let us work like good fellows, 
trying by some dim candlelight to set our workshop 
ready against to-morrow's daylight.^ 



' William Morris. 



156 



IV 
THRIFT 

Thrift is a text which' has a mysterious 
fascination for preachers. When I speak 
of preachers I by no means confine myself 
to men in Holy Orders, but include in 
my purview all those ^ who feel it their 
duty to admonish their fellow-men, and 
especially to exhort the poor. It is worthy 
of note that in each succeeding age the 
most strenuous preachers of thrift are those 
whom Providence has placed beyond the 
reach of poverty. When the Irish famine 
broke out, the head of the English peerage 
recommended the poor to rely on curry- 
powder as a nutritious and satisfying food ; 
while the Council of the Royal Agricultural 
Society, numbering some of the largest land- 
owners of England, lectured the labourers 
on the sustaining properties of thrice -boiled 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



bones. Archbishops and Bishops always 
try, like " Bishop " in Little Dorrit, to 
look as if they were rather poor than 
otherwise, and, when reformers like the 
Rev. Hubert Handley refer to the statistics 
in Whitaker, assure us that they have much 
ado to live in decency, and so can preach 
Thrift with a good conscience. Judges, too, 
strong in the secure enjoyment of oG 5,000 
a year, are heavily down on extravagance ; 
and Ministers of State, while they exclaim 
with patriotic fortitude, " I draw my salary," 
tell us less fortunate citizens to save our 
half -sheets of paper and to discard batter 
in favour of margarine. It must be ad- 
mitted that these consentient voices form 
a solemn harmony. " Be thrifty " ; " Eco- 
nomize " ; " Abandon your luxuries " ; " Live 
on half your income " — who can fail to 
be impressed by such commands as these, 
proceeding from monitors who pay super- 
tax? It behoves each one of us to look 
into his own expenditure, and see how 
far he can comply with these insistent 

hortations . 
158 



THRIFT 

Swift is certainly not a writer to whom 
one would normally go for lessons of right 
living ; but now and then he dropped a 
maxim which was worth remembering — 
" The stoical scheme of supplying our 
wants by lopping off our desires, is like 
cutting off our feet, when wc want shoes." 
Indeed, the case might be put more strongly. 
One could, on an emergency, cut off one's 
feet, but no one can " lop off desires." 
We can, indeed, restrain desires, and refuse 
to gratify them. Every one who is not 
a criminal lunatic does so habitually. But 
desires can only be " lopped off " by some 
power which we do not control — a change 
in ourselves or in outward circumstances. 
The most that the strongest man can say 
about a conscious desire is : " It shall not 
master me." So, when the preachers of 
thrift declaim, they must not imagine that 
a hunting man can " lop off " his desire 
for a string of horses, or a working-man 
for a glass of beer, or a rich woman for 
a diamond necklace, or a shop-girl for a 
new hat. All that he or she can manage 

159 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



is : "I should like it, but I will go 
without it." 

When once, from whatever motive, we 
face the salutary self -discipline of " going 
without it," the difficulty always is to know 
where one should begin. When the Tories 
cut down the £50,000 a year which the 
Whigs had proposed for Prince Albert, and 
fobbed him off with a beggarly £30,000, 
the Prince's comforters said that he must 
reduce his subscriptions. But this admirable 
method of making two ends meet cannot 
be universally followed, for it is not every 
one that has any subscriptions to reduce. 
Mr. John Dash wood, as we all know, had 
fully meant to give each of his three 
orphan sisters a thousand pounds ; but, after 
a careful survey of his financial position 
and a protracted consultation with his wife, 
he came to the conclusion that some help 
in moving their furniture, and a present 
of game at Christmas, would amply fulfil 
the requirements of the situation. When 
the bankrupt Duke of Buckingham was 
told that his means no longer permitted 
160 



THRIFT 

him to keep an Italian confectioner, as 
well as a French Chef and an English 
roasting-cook, he exclaimed, in natural 
horror : " Good Gad ! Mayn't a man have 
a biscuit with his glass of sherry ? " It 
is really very difficult to draw the line 
between necessaries and luxuries. Even 
Professor and Mrs. Eawcett, under whom 
I sate in my youth, failed to draw it very 
clearly ; nor did we gain much assistance 
from the case (cited by them as a triumph 
of Political Economy) of the French work- 
man, who " had at the same time the 
enjoyment of a pair of shoes and of a 
window." For those whose notions of decent 
living extend any further than this curious 
combination of comforts, the present moment 
is full of perplexity. We know^ that, as 
a nation, we are spending money at a 
rate which baffles comprehension ; and we 
also know that we shall inevitably have 
to pay our share of it. The only questions 
are : How ? and How much ? 

Auberon Herbert, who was the most 

quixotic of politicians, was enthusiastically 

L i6i 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

in favour of voluntary taxation. He was 
persuaded that, if only the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer would plainly state the 
national needs, every one would' rush to 
supply the money. The Chancellor would 
get more — and much more — by free gifts 
than by compulsion. Myself a worshipper 
of Freedom, I feel that in the case sup- 
posed we might be trying the principle 
a little too high. Not that I doubt my 
fellow-citizens' patriotism ; nor my own ; 
but my mind misgives me that one would 
say, when Christmas came round : " Things 
are rather tight with me this year, I 
think we will let this demand stand over 
for twelve months, and see what I can 
do then." Robert Lowe took a sounder 
view of the position. " It is," he said, 
" the business of the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer to distribute a certain amount 
of human misery ; and the man who dis- 
tributes it most equally is the best Chan- 
cellor." Mr. Bonar Law is, I believe, very 
much of the same opinion as his less 
popular predecessor, and he is certainly 
162 



THRIFT 

distributing the misery with lavish hand. 
Whether he has yet succeeded in attain- 
ing equality I am not quite sure. In 
spite of the super -tax, the man with £50,000 
a year still seems appreciably more com- 
fortable than the man with £500 a year. To 
the last-named sufferer it is quite needless 
for Cabinet Ministers and Bishops and 
Judges to preach thrift. It is preached by 
the still more persuasive voices of the 
Tax-gatherer and the Rate-collector. He 
reduces his expenditure because he has 
less to spend. " Haven't you got any old 
clothes ? " exclaims the energetic lady who 
runs the Red Cross Hospital. " Have I 
any others?" he replies. "If you take 
my old clothes, I must lie in bed till the 
war is over." 

In the wide intervening region between 
£500 a year and £50,000, thrift is 
poractised on voluntary principles ; and the 
greater the house the more conspicuous 
the change produced by War-Economy. The 
chef is fighting for France ; the footmen 
are fighting for England. The butler is 

16.^ 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

obviously beyond military age ; and his 
grandson^ who officiates as valet and 
groom-of -the -chambers, has apparently just 
escaped from the Elementary School. 



164 



V 
CHIVALRY 

The word which heads this chapter stands 
for an Ideal. Certainly that ideal has 
been from' time to time encrusted by- 
accretions which obscured its true char- 
acter. It has been associated with a 
vainglorious militarism, with the servile 
subordination of class to class, with the 
darkness and violence of mediceval Europe. 
Even Burke, its most impassioned cham- 
pion, mixed' the good and the evil which 
the word suggests, in undiscriminating 
eulogy :— 

Never, never more, shall we behold that generous 
loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that 
dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, 
which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of 
an exalted freedom ! The unbought grace of life, 
the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly 
sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone ! It is gone 

\65 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, 
which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired 
courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled 
whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost 
half its evil by losing all its grossness ! 

That last clause is ethically unsound, 
and in the preceding exclamations the good 
and the evil of chivalry are strangely con- 
fused ; but these are the faults of 
exuberance, and Burke touched the heart 
of the matter when he said that, if 
chivalry is renounced, " a woman is but 
an animal, and an animal not of the 
highest order. All homage paid to the 
sex in general as such, and without distinct 
views, is to be regarded as romance and 
folly." 

The true ideal — the inner spirit — of 
chivalry was the championship of the 
weak by the strong. In a special, though 
not an exclusive, sense chivalry meant the 
protection of womankind from injury and 
insult. To the chivalrous heart, and, if 
need were, to the chivalrous sword, no 
woman could appeal in vain. 
1 66 



CHIVALRY 



As we look back to the Middle Age, 
we seem' to see nothing but a welter of 
bloodshed and devastation :— 

The heavens all gloom, the wearied earth all crime. 

But from! the dead-level of violent wrong 
which fills the centuries there emerge, at 
intervals, higher points of horror, and one 
of these is, and always has been, the 
murder of the Maid of Orleans. "A 
national instead of a party cry, strict 
morality enforced by a Heaven-sent virgin, 
and the enthusiasm' of religion," were the 
aids which she brought to the service of 
her country ; and her reward was death 
by fire. All that was chivalrous in human 
nature revolted from the deed and enrolled 
Joan of Arc, by a kind of informal 
canonization, in the Kalendar of Saints. 
We leave the Middle Age behind and 
embark on the new world. Chivalry is 
not dead, though, as before and since, 
it is overcome by brutal and calculated 
violence. Mary Queen of Scots is justly 
chargeable with real and grievous crimes. 

167 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



If she had died a natural death, even though 
it were at Loch Leven or at Fotheringay, 
the world in general would have been as 
hard on her memory as Froude himself. 
But the very fact that a defeated and 
friendless woman perished by the execu- 
tioner's axe rallied affection and forgiveness 
to her side. 

" Judge Jeffreys " is a name which, for 
two centuries, has borne much the same 
significance in English jurisprudence as 
Pontius Pilate in the Creed. It has stood 
for judicial murder inflicted in the name 
of law, and for the effusion of innocent 
blood. Yet even in that hideous record 
there stands one act which English chivalry 
has always remembered with peculiar loath- 
ing. At Jeffreys' bidding a woman was 
beheaded because she had given " a morsel 
of bread and a cup of water to a hunted 
rebel " ; and as long as men remember 
Jeffreys they will remember Alice Lisle. 

The French Revolution was, in its origin, 
an expiation of intolerable wrongs ; and 
England might well have stood on one 
i68 



CHIVALRY 



side while a sister -country was readjusting 
her social order, even though by rough 
methods. But, when Marie Antoinette 
died by the guillotine, it did not need 
Burke's eloquence to rouse the chivalry, 
of England. We w*ent into the French 
war as into a crusade, and forgot all 
the icrimes of the Kings of France in 
compassion for a butchered Queen, and for 
the long train of brave and innocent women 
who followed her to the scaffold. 

When England learned that Nana Sahib 
had hacked to death the English ladies 
whom he had imprisoned, then — and not 
till then — Englishmen were stirred to deeds 
of just though frightful retribution. 
Macaulay wrote : "I who cannot bear to 
see a beast or bird in pain, could look 
on without winking while Nana Sahib 
underwent all the tormients of Ravaillac." 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, surveying from 
neutral ground the crime and the punish- 
ment, said : " England takes down the 
Map of the World, which she has girdled 
with empire, and makes a correction thus : 

169 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

DELHI, Dele. The civilized world says, 
' Amen ! '" 

We look back ; we look round us ; we 
look forward. The aspect of Europe in 
the Middle Age was scarcely more horrible 
or more threatening than its aspect in 
the Twentieth Century. Rapine and blood- 
shed are only more scientific now than 
then, and human savagery, bursting through 
the thin veneer of civilization, shows no 
trace of diminution. Yet, even over the 
horrors which have surrounded us for the 
last three years, certain incidents tower 
in a hateful eminence ; and of those 
incidents the most loathsome is, again, 
the murder of a woman. 

The age of chivalry, said Burke, is 
gone; but he despaired too soon. Its 
outward forms and trappings, its speech 
and its methods, have changed with the 
changing world ; but its inner spirit lives, 
and will live as long as any spark of 
the Divine nature dwells in the hearts of 
men. Chivalry is the defence of the weak 
by the strong. Chivalry is the service 
170 



CHIVALRY 



which every man owes to every woman. 
Death is not the deepest injury which 
womankind can suffer, nor the only enemy 
against which man is bound to protect 
her. Let every Enghshman whose blood 
boils with impotent rage when he thinks 
of Edith Cavell's execution bind himself 
by a Crusader's vow that, though he could 
not save her life, he will do what in 
him lies to save the honour of her sisters 
in the human family. Then, as Lincoln 
resolved that, from the cemetery of Gettys- 
burg, America should have " a new birth 
of freedom," so, from the grave where 
Edith Cavell lies, England shall have a 
new birth of that manly virtue which is 
the very soul of Chivalry. 



171 



VI 

THE DARK SIDE OF SCIENCE 

My title sounds like a parody. The gifted 
Mrs. Crowe thrilled the young people of 
her time with The Night Side of Nature, 
and perhaps some echo of those mysterious 
words flitted across my mind when I read 
Professor Osier's remiarkable lecture on the 
horrors which Science has added to war : — 

It has made slaughter possible on a scale never 
dreamt of before, and it has enormously increased 
man's capacity to maim and to disable his fellow-men. 

When I was a boy, " Science " was 
entering on a triumiphant period of its 
career, and the word had lately come to 
bear a new and an exclusive sense. 
" Science " at Oxford had always meant 
moral and mental science — ethic, logic, and, 
within bounds, metaphysic. " We elected 
172 



THE DARK SIDE OF SCIENCE 

him for his science," said the Principal 
of Brasenose about Walter Pater, who had 
just got his Fellowship, and certainly knew 
no miore of electricity or physiology than 
I know of space. Elsewhere the word 
" Science " was commonly used with a 
descriptive epithet, and m'en spoke of 
moral science or mental science or physical 
science, thereby relating the word to one 
or other of the three parts which were then 
held to constitute the man. 

But about i860 a curious change came 
over common speech, and men who 
talked of Science were found to mean, 
exclusively, physical or natural science — 
the science which deals with material 
phenomena. There were reasons for the 
change. Moral science had sunk into 
disfavour, and was branded as an 
anachronism or a superstition by those 
who held that man has no means of 
establishing a relation with God, and that 
there is, therefore, no absolute standard 
of right and wrong. Mental science had 
been discredited by the dogmatism of 

.'173 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

those who most strenuously upheld it, and 
most scornfully rejected moral science. 
Mr. Balfour has admirably shown, in an 
autobiographical passage of his " Lectures 
on Theism and Humanism," that such 
teachers as Mill and Leslie Stephen drove 
some enquiring minds in the exactly op- 
posite direction to that which they in- 
tended. Moral and mental science having 
both receded, natural or physical science 
acquired the exclusive right to the title 
of " Science." The physicists took the 
concrete world as they found it, they 
investigated it, and they utilized it. They 
cared not a jot for the Platonists who 
said that stones and plants and animals 
were not realities, but only ideas. They 
would have sympathized with Sydney Smith, 
who, sending a brace of grouse to a 
metaphysical friend, said : "In other and 
better language, they are mere ideas, shot 
by other ideas, out of a purely intellectual 
notion called a gun." They thought, and 
they made others think, that in confining 
their sattention to the natural world they 
174 



THE DARK SIDE OF SCIENCE 

had got down to reality. Theologians 
might harangue about right and wrong, 
and philosophers might argue intermin- 
ably about the nature of knowledge ; but 
a man who worked at chemistry or botany 
or anatomy iiad got hold of something 
definite, and showed results from' his 
labours which none could gainsay. 

And Science, in this restricted sense, 
had a great deal to say for itself. Not 
every one thinks, but every one feels ; 
and each person who sent a telegram, 
or travelled on a railw'ay, or took an 
anassthetic, felt that life had been miade 
perceptibly more comfortable by Science. 
So Science had its heyday. Every school- 
boy must be taught it. Every one who 
pretended to culture must be able to 
chatter about it. Plausible M.P.'s must 
lecture on it to their constituents. Popular 
clergymen must preach about it— either 
against it, as an invention of the Evil 
One, or for it, as a revelation of the 
Divine. The heyday of Science was also 
the heyday of materialism. The facts of 

i7S 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

spiritual experience were ignored or denied, 
and the disputations of the philosophers 
interested no one outside the Universities. 
Material prosperity was abundant. Wealth 
was increasing rapidly. The comforts and 
conveniences and luxuries of life were multi- 
plied beyond all precedent ; and every one 
said that these were the blessed results 
of Science. Every fresh discovery of the 
forces latent in nature was hailed as in 
itself a good. But just in the middle 
of this triumphant period, which I date 
from i860 to 1880, a Warning voice \vas 
heard. In 1870 Ruskin delivered his 
inaugural lecture as Slade Professor at 
Oxford, and thus addressed his under- 
graduate hearers : — , 

Within the last few years we have had the laws of 
natural' science opened to us with a rapidity w^hich 
has been blinding by its brightness ; and means of 
transit and communication given to us, which have 
made but one kingdom of the habitable globe. One 
kingdom ; — but who is to be its king ? Is there to 
be no king in it, think you, and every man to do that 
which is right in his own eyes? Or only kings of 
terror, and the obscene empires of Mammon and 
Behal ? 
176 



THE DARK SIDE OF SCIENCE 

The words were prophetic. Within six 
months the Franco -Prussian War had broken 
out, and " Science " had shown the world 
what it could do in the artistic destruction 
of human life on a scale then unprecedented. 
But England did not pause to ponder the 
lesson, and for another ten years Science 
pursued its triumphant way, acclaimed on 
all hands as the one subject worthy of 
human study. From a point which we 
may roughly date about 1880, finer voices 
began to make themselves heard. Men 
appeared, quite outside the ranks of pro- 
fessional theologians, who taught that the 
things of the spirit are, after all, the 
things that really matter ; that the moral 
life is quite as interesting as the bodily 
life, and more important, as it lasts con- 
siderably longer. In brief, the spiritual 
idea of the world arrayed itself once more 
against the material idea, and the ups 
and downs of that struggle forni the 
philosophical history of 1880-19 14. Then, 
swift and terrible as the lightning of God, 
came the vindication of the spiritual con- 
M 177 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

tent ion. All at once the world saw, and 
has from that time continued to see, what 
Science can effect for human misery — ■ 

In the making of r5-inch guns, that will throw with 
accuracy a ton of metal a dozen or more miles, is found 
such a combination of brains and machinery as does 
not exist in any other human product. 

To guns, add submarines and Zeppelins 
and poisonous gases, and yet you have 
not half exhausted the devilries of which 
Science is capable. 

It is true that Professor Osier goes on 
to show the alleviating effects of Science 
in medicine and surgery, and these no 
moralist would deny or belittle. But the 
conclusion of the whole matter is that 
Science is not, as its devotees fifty years 
ago believed, a good in itself. It is 
merely power ; and whether it is a blessing 
or a curse to the world depends entirely 
on the spirit in which, and the objects 
for which, it is employed. Even Science 
is a smaller thing than the human will. 



178 



VII 

WATERLOO 

If the Centenary of Waterloo had fallen 
in a norm'al year it might, I fear, have 
been celebrated by an outbreak of offen- 
sive Jingoism. Our fire-eaters of Press 
and platform would scarcely have been 
content to glorify that supreme perform- 
ance of British arms without some dis- 
paragement of the nation which we then 
defeated. The opponents of free institutions 
would probably have used the occasion for 
an attack, more or less decently veiled, 
oil French Republicanism, and would have 
urged the duty of closer relations with 
that military despotism which inherits the 
traditions of Bliicher. A centenary of 
Waterloo, dominated by such influences as 
these, would have been a triumph of bad 
taste and bad feeling. But now all is 

179 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



changed. We have seen in practice what 
we have long beUeved in theory about the 
character and fruits of militarism. We 
have found in Republican and industrial 
France our gallant and cordial ally ; and, 
if we refer to the great event of a hundred 
years ago, we speak in no spirit of vulgar 
boastfulness. We are thankful for deliver- 
ance from a danger even more formidable 
than that which threatens us to-day, but 
we recognize as amply as the French them- 
selves the genius which then so nearly 
subjugated us. We rejoice that the 
descendants of the men who fought 
against us in 1 8 1 5 are in 1 9 1 5 fighting 
with us for freedom and civilization. 

The accidents of life linked me, in early 
youth, with survivors of the Napoleonic 
period, and another such link recurs to my, 
mind to-day. I do not propose to re- 
open the much -controverted question of the 
particular spot in " Belgium's capital " on 
which the Duchess of Richmond gave her 
ball and awoke the " sound of revelry 
by night " ; but it interests me to remem- 
180 



WATERLOO 



ber that two of her daughters, with" whom, 
as the Scotch say, I " called cousins," 
survived into the present century, and that 
the one whom I knew best was brought 
down from her nursery -bed to buckle the 
Duke of Wellington's sword as he set out 
from the ball-room on his way to Quatre 
Bras. 

In The Spirit of England I described 
the doings of " The Hundred Days," when 
Englishmen, who had fondly believed that 
Napoleon would remain quietly at Elba 
for the remainder of his natural hfe, dis- 
covered, to their great astonishment, that 
he had escaped from that enforced seclu- 
sion, and was marching triumphantly to- 
wards Paris. The newly -restored King 
fled at his approach. Evidently a con- 
clusive struggle was now at hand, and 
the Allied Powers of Europe agreed that 
Wellington was the one man in whom 
Napoleon might find his match. But 
Wellington, whose caution was a form of 
genius, and who, in his own phrase, had 
" spent his life in guessing what was on 

i8i 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

the other side of the hill," w'as in no 
hurry to begin. He knew that England 
was not prepared for the fight, and he 
resolved to postpone the opening of the cam- 
paign till June or July. On the loth of May, 
1815, Wilham Wilberforce wrote in his 
diary : " If Bonaparte could be unhorsed 
it would, humanly speaking, be a bless- 
ing to the European world, indeed to all 
nations, and Government ought to know 
both his force and their own. Yet I 
greatly dread their being deceived, remem- 
bering how Pitt was," On the 15th: 
" All this time, a fearful interval, expect- 
ing the bursting out of the war. It is 
amazing how little people seem moved." 
The 1 8th of June was a Sunday — " that 
loud Sabbath " which Tennyson extolled 
in later years. Wilberforce spent it 
quietly at Taplow Vicarage. " Perhaps," 
he said to his children on the way to 
church—" perhaps at this very moment, 
when we are walking thus in peace 
together to the house of God, our brave 
fellows may be fighting hard in Belgium." 
182 



WATERLOO 



On the 22nd he knew^ that he had 
divined aright, " A dreadful battle," he 
writes. " British victorious, but great 
loss. We are said to have lost twenty - 
five thousand men, the French fifty thou- 
sand. Oh ! my heart sickens at the scene ! 
Yet, praise God for this wbnderful vic- 
tory." It all reads like a narrative of 
the present day, reduced in scale, but 
animated by exactly the same spirit ; and 
the similarity is completed by these last 
entries : — " Took the chair at a meeting 
of neighbours for a fund for the widows 
and children of the killed and wounded 
belonging to the ist Life Guards, always 
quartered at Knightsbridge." " I never see 
a soldier or a sailor without a mingled 
feeling of gratitude and com^Dassion." 

The first person in England to receive 
the news of Waterloo was Nathan Meyer 
Rothschild, who had recently settled in 
London, and laid the foundations of 
the great business which still bears his 
name. A messenger, some say a member, 
of the firm had crossed the Channel in 

183 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

an open boat, and brought sonle infor- 
mation which suggested a large and 
profitable investment in Consols. That 
stroke of business accomplished, the 
emissary was sent to the Prime Minister, 
Lord Liverpool, and had considerable 
difficulty in persuading him that the good 
news was true. So, not for the last tim'e, 
Finance outran Statesmanship in the attain- 
ment of knowledge which changed the face 
of Europe. 

How had the victory been won ? By 
good luck or good guidance? By fortune 
or genius ? Military historians of all 
countries have contested every inch of this 
ground, with very different results. An 
audacious attempt by Mrs. Arbuthnot, wife 
of the Duke's Private Secretary, to elicit 
the Duke's own opinion on the question, 
fared as it deserved : — " You won't mind 
telling me, Duke, for we are such old 
friends— is it true that you were surprised 

at Waterloo?" "By G , mum, not half 

as much surprised as I am now ! " 

The great majority of Englishmen have 
184 



WATERLOO 



accepted the Duke's own declaration that 
throughout that long day of struggle he 
never was alarmed about the result ; and 
have agreed to believe, with his arch- 
toady, Wilson Croker, in " the clear 
lucidity of a mind that rose high above 
the clouds of battle accumulated below." 
So perhaps it was. I do not pretend 
to an opinion, for the civilian critic of 
military operations courts discomfiture. He 
fails, not because he lacks the necessary 
information— for that can be acquired— but 
because, where the instinct of war is 
lacking, the greater the information, the 
greater the confusion. The final word on 
Waterloo was uttered by the Duke in 
private conversation nineteen years after 
the event — " Waterloo did more than any 
other battle I know of towards the true 
object of all battles — the peace of the 
world." 

The words deserve all the emphasis which 
We can give. The " Hero of a Hundred 
Fights " tells us that the true object of 
all battles is the peace of the world. 

185 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



Here is the warrant for the work in which 
England and France are now engaged ; 
and here is the issue for which we strive 
and pray. 



1 86 



VIII 
GREECE 

It requires som'e courage in these troublous 
times to declare oneself an impenitent Phil- 
Hellene. Yet that is my confession, and 
I will try to justify it. I hold that 
one's debt to a country or a race which 
has rendered conspicuous service to the 
world is inextinguishable, and from that 
point of view the Greeks are " of earth's 
first blood, have titles manifold." Greece 
gave the modern world its intellect ; and 
it was truly said by Gladstone that " the 
place of Aristotle and Plato in Christian 
education is not arbitrary, nor in principle 
mutable." Our modern psychology dates 
itself back to its origin in Aristotelian 
classification. The Platonic way of elicit- 
ing truth, by questioning and doubt and 
irony, has been the age-long foe of rash 
dogmatism ; and to the author of the 

187 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Phcedo, more conspicuously than to any 
other thinker of the ancient world, it was 
given to anticipate the revelation of a 
personal immortality. The life of the 
Greek Republics brought out into vivid 
consciousness the idea of free and honour- 
able citizenship. Greek art fixed the forms 
of beauty for all time. 

Deep, then, is our debt to Greece on 
the intellectual side ; and on the religious 
side it is deeper still. From the day 
when the black hoof of the Turkish in- 
vader first ravaged the fairest provinces 
of Christendom, to a date within the 
recollection of people still alive, the 
Greeks were martyrs and confessors for 
the cause of Christ ; and, through cen- 
turies of bodily and moral torture, they 
bore their irrefragable testimony to the 
Religion of the Cross. For that testi- 
mony, if for nothing else, our nominally 
Christian Europe owes Greece an imperish- 
able debt. 

In all ages and all countries the twin- 
spirits of Liberty and Patriotism have 
1 88 



GREECE 

found their natural vent in lyrical poetry ; 
and Greece, rich in lyrics of her own, has 
had a singular power of eliciting the 
" lyrical cry " from others. If England 
is glorious by anything, she is glorious 
by her poetry, and among her poets Byron 
stands eminent. In his character there 
is much to distress, and even to disgust ; 
but the inspiration of Greece raised his 
genius to its highest flights, and awoke 
whatever was chivalrous and heroic in his 
strangely mingled nature. Byron died for 
Greece, and by so dying he bound the 
two countries together with a bond which 
may be strained, but never can be broken. 
But then, as now, Phil-Hellenism' was an 
unpopular creed. The claims of the in- 
tellect and the spirit appealed in vain to 
the type of mind which admires nothing 
but size and force and material prosperity. 
Sir James Mackintosh had critics of this 
type in view when, in 1823, he delivered 
his famous oration : — 

It we rest the claims of the Greeks on the interests 
of Liberty, they call it revolutionary rant. If we 

189 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

speak of the interests of Religion, they call it the 
cant of fanaticism. If we give utterance to the 
sentiments which we are bound to cherish for the 
great teachers, instructors and ornaments of mankind, 
they deride us for using the commonplaces of 
schoolboys. 

At the moment Mackintosh seemed to 
speak in vain, but four years later 
England, Russia, and France shared the 
glory of Navarino ; and it was the English 
admiral who struck the decisive blow. 

All these heroic memories, stretching back 
to the fourth century before the Christian 
era, and ranging from Marathon to Misso- 
longhi, were revived for Englishmen by 
the Grasco -Turkish war of 1897. That 
war, and the Armenian atrocities out of 
which it sprang, stirred the chivalry of 
young England as it had not been stirred 
since the days of Garibaldi and the 
Thousand. A Phil-Hellenic Legion, defy- 
ing or evading all the restrictions imposed 
by international law, formed itself in 
London, and went off to the campaign in 
Greece in the same spirit as animated 
our crusading forefathers. One of the 
19c 



GREECE 

noblest lives that England gave to Greece 
was that of Clement Harris, who counted 
ease and wealth, and even the art which 
he so dearly loved, as naught when faith' 
and freedom demanded sacrifice. On the 
5th of April, 1897, he made this entry in 
his diary : — 

I am off this afternoon to Arta to enlist in the 
Greek Army. ... I have not time to write much this 
morning, but I only wish it to be clearly understood 
that no one is responsible in the least degree for the 
step which I have taken, and which to many may 
appear as an act of madness, but to myself (who have 
given the matter the fullest consideration) the least a 
man of honour can perform towards a country which 
crying for liberty in the name of the Cross, has been 
insulted and threatened by each so-called civilized 
Power successively. Unfortunately, I have not time 
to explain myself more clearly — but lovers of freedom 
will recognize a deeper motive for my thus offering 
myself to the service of a distressed and misunderstood 
country. 

Three weeks later he fell at the battle 
of Pentepigadia, and no one knows the 
place of his sepulchre unto this day. 

In that stirring and chivalrous time I 
was closely associated with many who 
risked their lives for Greece, and none of 

191 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



them, as far as I know, have ever 
repented of the venture. But from' their 
concurrent testimony I derived a very- 
strong impression that, as an ancient 
poet of Greece once said, " There are 
many who bear the reed, but few true 
bacchanals." There were professed and 
ostensible Greeks, sometimes in important 
stations, who had neither Hellenic blood 
in their veins nor Hellenic sympathies in 
their hearts. This fact co-operated with 
the poltroonery which at that time governed 
English politics, and with that " mutual 
distrust and hatred of the European 
Powers " which was Gladstone's synonym 
for the Concert of Europe. The most 
beautiful woman I ever saw was a Greek, 
and when I was introduced to her she 
asked if I had ever seen a Greek before. 
I replied that I was acquainted with this 
or that Greek family, but she replied, Kvith 
a disdainful smile : " Greeks ! Do theyj 
look like it? They are Levantines. My 
blood is unmixed." And certainly she 
looked as if Pheidias would have loved 
192 



GREECE 

to immortalize her in marble or Apelles 
on canvas. She was Greek to the core, 
and she came from the mountains, where 
Freedom has ever loved to dwell. Let us 
bear in mind that Athens is not Greece. 
Another report in which rriy friends re- 
turning frorrl the campaign were unanimous 
was that Greece was tired of an alien 
monarchy, and was ripe for a republic. 
I know that circumstances have changed, 
and that a king born and bred in Greece 
may have a stronger hold on his people 
than any of his imported predecessors. But 
the Poets are the Prophets, and Byron's 
prophecy may yet be verified in the land 
for which he died : " The King -times," 
he said, " are fast finishing ; there will 
be blood shed like w*ater and tears like 
mist, but the peoples w'ill conquer in the 
end. I shall not live to see it ; but 
I foresee it." 



N 193 



Ill 

PERSONALITIES 

ANCIENT AND MODERN 



A QUEEN READY-MADE 

Lord Esher'S narrte is a synonym for 
discretion.! When, therefore, this adfoit and 
trusty courtier tells us that Princess Vic- 
toria was not warmly attached to her 
mother, and detested her mother's sur- 
roundings ; that she was not highly 
educated ; that she Was by nature " auto- 
cratic " and " not very tender " ; and that 
she " avoided intimacies with members of 
her household " ; and when, quite inci- 
dentally, he informs us that the King's 
" dream " is to pull down Buckingham 
Palace and transfer the Court to Ken- 
sington, we may be sure that he is speak- 

' The Girlhood oj Queen Vicloria : a Selection from 
Her Majesty's Diaries heiiveoi the years 1832 and 
1840. Edited by Viscount Esher. 

197 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



ing with the full concurrence of the 
Illustrious Personages who have supervised 
his labours. Lord Esher does not write 
at random. That curious remark about 
Buckingharrt Palace may be thrown out 
for the guidance of some future Commis- 
sioner of Works ; and the care with which 
he notes Queen Victoria's limitations may 
be designed to show that, though a 
courtier, he retains the right of private 
judgment. 

The Queen began to keep a journal 
when she was thirteen, and before she 
died it filled over a hundred volum'es. 
The first entry is dated Wednesday, 
August I, 1832; and Lord Esher reminds 
us that the journal was not a sealed book : — 
"It was not privately put away under 
lock ,and key, and reserved only for the 
eye pf the writer. The young Princess's 
journal was com'menced in a volume given 
to her by her m'other, for the express 
purpose that she should record the facts 
of her daily life, and that this record 
of facts and impressions should be open 
198 



A QUEEN READY-MADE 



to the inspection of the child's governess 
as Well as of her mbther." A record 
exposed to this twofold censorship would 
naturally be discreet, and anything which 
it may have lacked in that direction is 
supplied by the scrupulous care of Lord 
Esher. Asterisks, though virtuous, are 
always tantalizing. 

It appears that in the domestic circle 
Princess Victoria habitually spoke German, 
with interludes of French ; and the fact 
that English was not her earliest language 
manifests itself in various breaches of the 
English idiom. " Who " appears where 
"whom" ,should be. "Led Mamma and 
I " is not good. " I had not seen him 
since four years," and " The news of the 
King are worse," betray a foreign in- 
fluence. The ordinary Briton finds it 
difficult to write a long letter in the third 
person, so We need not be too critical 
of this reference to Sir Robert Peel : " The 
Queen don't like his manner. . . . The 
Duke I like far better than Peel. The 
Queen trusts that Lord Melbourne will ex- 

199 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



cuse this long letter." It used' to be 
a tradition of good English that one never 
" took " anything except exercise and 
physic ; but Princess Victoria " took " 
breakfast, dinner, coffee, and tea. It is 
surprising to find that she used the hideous 
but convenient modernism, "We lunched"; 
though happily she avoided the truncated 
substantive from which that base verb is 
derived. On the other hand, she retained 
some forms of speech which were already 
obsolescent. Sir George Trevelyan has told 
us that Macaulay never would allow his 
nieces to say : " The tea is being made," 
but insisted on " The tea is making." Lord 
Russell once convened a meeting of his 
party in Chesham Place, because " Glad- 
stone's house was painting " ; and Princess 
Victoria, agreeably to this antique usage, 
" read The Conquest of Granada while my 
hair ^as doing," and " read in Shake- 
speare w'hile ray hair was undoing." There 
is a pleasant sound of old times in " well 
beat," and " ill-written," and " sung " as 
the perfect of sing, and " play-house " for 
200 



A QUEEN READY-MADE 

theatre ; but a room " giving on the park " 
sounds rather American than EngUsh. 

Yet although there were these traces of 
foreign influence in the young Princess's 
style, there were none in her character or 
conduct. It would be difficult to depict 
a nature more entirely English in its likes 
and dislikes, its prejudices and predilec- 
tions. She had flawless health and inex- 
haustible energy ; she loved concerts and 
theatres, dancing and riding, regattas and 
races and reviews ; delighted in her pet 
dogs, and birds, and horses, and enu- 
merated even her smallest presents on 
Christm'as Days and birthdays, with all 
the zest of youthful ownership. 

Princess Victoria had now struck sixteen, 
and she knew that, if she lived, in two 
years' time she would be old enough to reign. 
She wrote in her journal for the 24th of 
May, 1835 • — " I fs^l t^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ years to 
come, till I attain my eighteenth birthday, 
are the most important of almost any." 
A year later she wrote about the death 
of her old nurse : — " My chief regret is 

201 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

that she did not live till I was my own 
mistress, and could make her quite com'- 
fortable " ; and, having made great friends 
with a family of gipsies encamped near 
Clarem'ont— " such a nice set of gipsies, so 
quiet, so affectionate to one another, so 
discreet " — she recorded a generous aspira- 
tion : — " I trust in Heaven that the day 
may come when I may do something for 
these poor people, and for this particular 
family. . . . Whenever any poor gipsies are 
encamped anywhere, and crimes and robberies 
should occur, it is invariably laid to their 
account, which is shocking ; and, if they 
are always looked upon as vagabonds, how 
can they become good people ? . . . The 
gipsy family, Cooper, will never be obliterated 
from my memory ! " 

And now' the eventful day drew on, 
which would bring the Heiress Presump- 
tive to her legal majority. Here I pause 
to justify my title. Such are the tricks 
of language that, if I had written " A 
Ready-made Queen," the phrase would have 
had a derogatory and cheapening sound ; 
202 



A QUEEN READY-MADE 

but the transposition pf the substantive and 
the epithet exactly conveys my meaning. 
WilHam IV was nearing his end, and his 
successor was " ready-made " — prepai'ed in 
advance for the fulfilment of her unique 
and astonishing destiny. Her uncle, King 
Leopold (of whom Lprd Esher says that 
he thought he had reduced the rules of 
sovereignty to a scjc'i^ce), was // ntio 
secondo padre, or rather solo padre ; and 
he employed the mysterious Stockmar, a 
physician turned diplomatist, to inculcate 
what he esteemed wholesome lessons. The 
Princess had met the principal statesmen 
of the day at her mother's dinner-table, 
but " there is nothing in the journals or 
elsewhere to show that before she was 
eighteen she had ever talked seriously or 
at any length to any man or woman of 
exceptional gifts . ' ' 

Early in May 1837 it became known 
that the King was dangerously ill. The 
flutter of excitement, the hum of rumours, 
contradictions, and explanations, to which 

the news gave rise, are described by a 

203 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

master-hand in the sixth chapter of Sybil. On 
the 13th of June Lord Melbourne instructed 
Greville, as Clerk of the Council, to " get 
everything ready quietly " for the Council 
which must be held on the accession. 
On the 1 5th the Princess wrote in her 
journal : " I just hear that the doctors 
think my poor uncle the King cannot last 
more than forty -eight hours ! Poor man ! 
He was always kind to me,, and he meant 
it AVell, I know ; I am grateful for it, 
and shall ever remember his kindness with 
gratitude. He was odd, very odd and 
singular, but his intentions wfere often ill- 
interpreted." 

In the early dawn pf June 20, Arch- 
bishop Howley and the Lord Chamberlain, 
Lord Conygham, galloped up from Windsor 
as fast as four horses could bring them, 
and made their Way, after considerable 
difficulties with sentries and porters, into 
the Palace. Here the journal m'ust be 
resumed : — " I was woke at six o'clock 
by Mamma, who told mc that the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury and Lord Conygham 
204 



A QUEEN READY-MADE 

were here, and wished to see me. I 
got out of bed and Went into niy sitting- 
room (only in my dressing-gown), and 
alone, and saw them. Lord Conygham 
(the Lord Chamberlain) then acquainted 
me that my poor uncle, the King, was no 
more, and had expired at twelve minutes 
p. two this morning, and consequently that 
I am Queen. Lord Conygham knelt down 
and kissed my hand, at the same time 
delivering to m'e the official announcement 
of the poor King's demise. . . . Lord 
Conygham, whom I charged to express my 
feelings of condolence and sorrow to the 
poor Queen, returned directly to Windsor. 
I then went to my room and dressed. 

" Since it has pleased Providence to place 
me in this station, I shall do my utmost 
to fulfil my duty towards my country. I 
am very young, and perhaps in many, 
though not in all, things inexperienced ; 
but I am sure that very few have more 
real goodwill and more real desire to do 
what is fit and right than I have." 

It is impossible to transcribe these words 

.205 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

without astonishment at the fortitude of a 
girl, barely out of the schoolroom, who 
mounts a throne— and such a throne !— with 
this absolute composure. The journal pro- 
ceeds :— 

Breakfasted. ... At nine came Lord Melbourne 
whom I saw in my room, and, of course, quite alone, 
as I shall always do all my Ministers. He kissed my 
hand and I then acquainted him that it had long 
been my intention to retain him and the rest of the 
present Ministry at the head of affairs, and that it 
could not be in better hands than his. 

" Long "—and the young lady had not 
been for quite two months of an age to 
exercise her sovereignty ! 

At noon she was presiding at her 
first Council, and' the Duke of Welling- 
ton affirmed that " if she had been his 
own daughter, he could not have desired 
to see her perform her part better." Next 
day she was proclaimed, and held a 
second Council, " at which she presided 
with as much ease as if she had 
been doing nothing else all her life." 
And so began an exercise of queenship 
206 



A QUEEN READY-MADE 



which endured with ever-increasing influence 
over public affairs till the autumn of 1900. 

These journals are delightfully human 
in their pictures of life and its enjoy- 
ments ; and they convey a very strong 
sense of that absolute straightforwardness 
with which their writer was always credited 
by those who knew her best. " Lehzen," 
she said, referring to her old governess, 
" Lehzen often said that she had never 
seen such a passionate and naughty child 
as I was ; but I had never told a false- 
hood, though I knew I should be 
punished." The days of punishment were 
now over, and the emancipated Princess 
enjoyed herself to the top of her bent. 

It is the tritest commonplace to say 
that Queen Victoria owed much to Lord 
Melbourne ; but these journals show that 
she owed him even more than we knew, 
and perhaps in rather unexpected ways. 
That he was her sedulous and sagacious 
counsellor in her principles and working 
of the Constitution we all knew ; and it 

is interesting to note that his counsels 

207 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

became more and more authoritative as 
months went by. But, apart from these 
poUtical lessons, the Queen soon fell into 
the habit of jotting down fragments from 
Melbourne's table-talk ; and these frag- 
ments convey some sense of the bracing 
and widening effect of his mind on hers. 
His view of life generally was informal, 
individual, unconventional ; and his con- 
versation was enlivened by those touches 
of paradox which are useful in making- 
young people think. For a girl reared 
in the cloister-like seclusion of Kensing- 
ton Palace, taught by a Dean, a Duchess, 
and an Old Maid, and never allowed to 
read a novel, it must have been an in- 
structive experience to hear Melbourne 
discoursing on horses and dogs and 
Women's beauty, on the gossip of the 
eighteenth century, on the excellence of 
pensions, on the crimes of navvies, on 
the tiresomeness of education, on the virtues 
of Euthanasia, on the foolishness of the 
Irbys, on the merits and defects of Eton, 
on Shakespeare and Scott, and English 
208 



A QUEEN READY-MADE 

pronunciation and French cooking, and 
snoring in church, and conjugal relation- 
ships ; " was separated from her hus- 
band, and excited pity, as he was known 
or supposed to have beat her. Upon this 
Lord Melbourne said : ' Why, it is almost 
worth while for a woman to be beat, 
considering the exceeding pity she excites,' 
which made us laugh." 

The Queen had come to the throne, 
" ready-m'ade " as far as knowledge of the 
rights and duties of the Crown was con- 
cerned, and not without preferences as 
between political parties. Two years after 
her accession she wrote : "I had been 
always brought up in very strong feelings 
on the Whig side " ; and Melbourne's in- 
fluence naturally confirmed those feeliijgs. 
Very soon the Queen identified herself with 
her Ministers in a degree which certainly 
was not repeated until Lord Beaconsfield's 
second Administration. She watched the 
Elections with anxious interest ; was de- 
lighted when Whigs were returned, and 
thankful when Tories or Radicals were 
o 209 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

defeated. A bad division in the House 
of Commons affected her like a personal 
calamity : — 

May 7th, 1839. — I awoke at | p. 8 and heard from 
Lord Surrey that we had only had a majority of 
five ! This struck to my heart, and I felt dreadfully 
anxious. ... I received a letter from Lord Melbourne, 
in which he stated what had taken place, that he had 
not yet heard from Lord John, but that he feared they 
had no other alternative — can I write it ? — but to resign. 

This extract refers to a crisis which", 
though in some of its bearings serious 
enough, yet in others wore the semblance 
of a Comedy of Errors. For an account 
of it I turn from Lord Esher to Lord 
Beaconsfield : — " One morning there was an 
odd whisper in the circle of first initia- 
tion. The clubs were crowded, even at 
noon. Everywhere a mysterious bustle and 
an awful stir. What could be the matter? 
•What had happened? The world was 
employed the whole of the mbrning in 
asking and answering this important ques- 
tion, 'Is it true ? ' Towards dinner -timfe 
it Was settled universally in the affirma- 
210 



A QUEEN READY-MADE 

live ; and then the wbrld went out to 
dine and to ascertain why it was true 
and how it was true. 

"And now, what had really happened? 
What had happened was what is comnionly 
called a 'hitch.' The Whig Ministers, it 
seemed, had resigned ; but somehow or other 
had not entirely and completely gone out. 
What a constitutional dilemma ! But then the 
oddest rumour in the world got about. 
... It seemed, though, of course, no one 
could for a moment credit it, that these 
rebellious, wrong-headed Ministers, who 
would not go out, wore petticoats ! " 

In plainer phrase. Lord Melbourne and 
his colleagues had obtained a majority of 
only five on a Bill to suspend the Con- 
stitution of Jam'aica, " a measure requiring 
more than ordinary support and confidence, 
but which had met with less than was 
usually accorded to them'." This rebuff 
they treated as a Vote of Want of Con- 
fidence, and determined to resign. When 
Melbourne placed the resignation in the 
Queen's hands, she " held his hand for 

211 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

a little while, unable to let go/' and said, 
" You will not forsake me." Lord John 
Russell, as Leader of the House of Com- 
mons, came to explain the case, and thanked 
the Queen for her kindness, " which quite 
set me off crying, and I said it was a 
terrible thing for me." Later in the day 
Melbourne returned, " having written down 
what he thought the Queen should do." 
The conclusion of the paper was : " Your 
Majesty had better express your hope that 
none of Your Majesty's Household, except 
those who are engaged in politics, may 
be removed." This done, the Queen sum- 
moned the Duke of Wellington, as titular 
Leader of the victorious party, Melbourne 
good-naturedly smoothing the Way by say- 
ing that the Duke was very deaf — " Mind 
the Duke understands what you say." The 
Duke came, and " was kind " ; and on 
his advice the Queen summoned Sir Robert 
Peel, whose strategy had defeated the 
Government. What then ensued is best 
given in the Queen's words :— " The Queen 
repeated what she had said to the Duke 

212 



A QUEEN READY-MADE 

about her fortn'er Government, and asked 
Sir Robert to form a newl Ministry. He 
does not seem sanguine ; says entering on 
the Governm'ent in a minority is Very 
difficult. . . . 'He felt the task arduous, 
and that he wbuld require me to demon- 
strate (a certain degree, if any, I can 
only feel) confidence in the Government, 
and that my Household would be one of 
the marks of that. The Queen mentioned 
the same thing about the Household, to 
which he at present would give no answer, 
but said nothing should be done without 
my knowledge or approbation. . . . He is 
such a cold, odd man. She can't make 
out what he means. . . . The Queen was 
very much collected, civil, and high, and 
betrayed no agitation during these two try- 
ing Audiences. But afterwards, again, all 
gave way." -What Peel meant was dis- 
closed in an Audience on the 9th of May, 
which Her Majesty thus described in a letter 
to Melbourne : — 

Sir Robert has behaved very ill. He insisted on 
my giving up my ladies, to which I replied that I 

213 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

never would consent, and I never saw a man so 
frightened ; he said he must go to the Duke of 
Welhngton and consult with him. ... I was calm, 
but very decided ; and I think you would have been 
pleased to see my composure and great firmness. The 
Queen of England will not submit to such trickery. 
Keep yourself in readiness, for you may soon be 
wanted. 

Later in the day Peel came again, urged 
the dismissal of the Ladies, and u^as told 
that the Queen would " reflect, but felt 
certain she should not change her mind." 
Then came Melbourne, and " approved all, 
and said I could not do otherwise. I 
acted quite alone, I said, and feared I 
might have embarrassed the Government. 
' I must summon the Cabinet,' said Lord 
M., 'at once; it may, have very serious 
consequences.' " 

The Cabinet met, deliberated, and recom- 
mended the Queen to write as follows to 
Peel :- 

The Queen, having considered the proposal made 
to her yesterday by Sir Robert Peel to remove the 
Ladies of her Bedchamber, cannot consent to adopt 
a course which she conceives to be contrary to usage 
and which is repugnant to her feelings. 
214 



A QUEEN READY-MADE 

On receipt of this very clear decision, 
Peel declined the task of forming an 
Administration, and Melbourne and his 
colleagues resumed the offices which they 
had not technically vacated. 

Disraeli, in Sybil, trounced the Con- 
servative Leader for his maladroit dealings 
with a young and impressionable Sove- 
reign, and ridiculed the policy which had 
been " brained by a fan." Charles Greville 
wrote : " It is a high trial to our insti- 
tutions when the wishes of a Princess 
of nineteen can overturn a great Minis- 
terial combination." Lord Esher tells us 
that the Queen, in her old age, said : 
" I was very young then, and perhaps 
I should act differently if it was all to 
be done again "; ; and that Melbourne blamed 
himself in after years for not having warned 
the Queen of the changes which Peel 
might demand ; but this self-reproach seems 
unnecessary in view of the Queen's words 
quoted above. Whether Peel ever repented 
of his share in the transaction is ex- 
tremely doubtful. It was all very well 

215 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

for Disraeli, who had hoped for sornle 
modest preferment under Peel's Adminis- 
tration, to say that " the Leader of the 
Tory Party should have vindicated his 
natural position, and availed him^self of the 
gracious occasion. He missed it, and the 
Whigs enjoyed its occurrence." But prob- 
ably when, two years later, Peel became 
Prime Minister, at the head of a trium- 
phant majority and with a conciliated Court, 
he was glad that he had not clutched the 
Premiership at a moment when neither 
Queen nor Commons wished him well. 

The "Bedchamber Plot" of 1839 was 
the last event of political importance Iwhich 
these volumes record, for on the 1 5th of 
October, 1839, the Queen proposed to 
Prince Albert, and the remainder of the 
narrative is a smooth tale of love. 



216 



II 

AN UNCROWNED KING 

Thirty -FIVE years ago the great Lord 
Shaftesbury told me what was then a piece 
of secret history. He said that Queen Vic- 
toria had been very anxious that the title 
of King-Consort should be conferred on 
Prince Albert, and that, as this could only 
be done by Act of Parliamlent, she had 
repeatedly urged Lord Melbourne to bring 
in a Bill conferring the title. Melbourne 
demurred ; the Queen persisted ; and then 
the sagacious! statesman gave the necessary 
warning : — -"' For G— — 's sake, Ma'am, let's 
hear no more of it. If you once get the 
English people into the way of m'aking 
Kings, they'll learn the way of unmaking 
them." This Lord Shaftesbury had direct 
from Melbourne (who was Lady Shaftes- 
bury's uncle), and Memoirs published under 

217 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Royal authority in recent years have proved 
it to be true. 

But the refusal of the Crown Matri- 
monial made no difference to the actual 
power of Prince Albert, though much to 
his seeming dignity. He was a man of 
high intelligence, assiduously cultivated. He 
devoted himself to the study of constitu- 
tional and international law. He watched 
every turn, and every sign of a turn, 
in domestic and foreign policy, and he 
was the adored husband of the Queen of 
England. " Through more than twenty 
years, which flowed past like one long, 
unclouded summer day " — the words are 
Gladstone's— their lives were one. 

No woman ever leaned more fondly, and no Queen 
had ever had so much cause to lean. . . . Even among 
happy marriages this marriage was exceptional, so 
nearly did the union of thought, heart, and action 
both fulfil the ideal, and bring duality near to the 
borders of identity. 

That in this combination of circumstances 
the Prince Consort should have become 
virtually joint -Sovereign was neither won- 
218 



^A^ UNCROWNED KING 

derful nor, in spite of constitutional 
grumblers, regrettable. The law* of nature 
gave in reality what an Act of Parliament 
could only have given in form, and Prince 
Albert was, for all practical purposes, a 
King. Those who wish to understand the 
mind and character of Queen Victoria must 
consult the letters and journals which she 
wrote before 1841 ; and (if their lives are 
spared ) those which she wrote after 1 8 6 1 . 
In the intervening twenty years they may 
indeed be reading the Queen's words, but 
they are conversing with the Prince's 
mind ; and in that mind they may per- 
haps discover reasons for the unquestion- 
able fact that the Pjrince was unpopular. 
Those who knew him' intimately admired 
and respected him' ; but the English people 
generally, and not least the aristocracy, 
misunderstood and disliked him'. It is a 
sorry confession ; but, when we remember 
the social and ethical tradition of England 
under George IV and William IV, it seems 
obvious that the Prince's unpopularity was 
due, in large part, to his virtues. In a 

219 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

debauched and profligate age, he had set 
from early youth an example of manly, 
rectitude. At a time when drunkenness 
was less a disgrace than an accomplish- 
ment, he was rigidly abstemious. -Whereas 
the Princes of the former generation had 
spent their lives in accumulating debts 
which the nation had to pay, he sedu- 
lously kept his expenditure within the limits 
of his income. But not his virtues only 
—his very accomplishments — were charged 
against him as offences. To a generation 
which had only just left off cock-fighting, 
and which still patronized the Erize Ring, 
there was something offensive in the notion 
of a young man who played the piano, 
composed music, and etched. 

In the displeasure of the younger 
" Bloods," who were the Prince's most 
persistent detractors, there may have even 
been a spice of jealousy. The Prince was 
brilliantly good-looking, though with a type 
of beauty neither English nor German ; 
and he had secured in mlarriage a hand 
to which others had aspired. The gueen 
220 



AN UNCROWNED KING 

herself has told us of a rem'ark which", 
in the first year of her reign, she nUade 
to Lord Melbourne : — " I observed that 
marrying a subject Was making yourself 
so much their equal, and brought you so 
in contact with the whole fam'ily." But 
it is not impossible that the Duke of 
Carabas and Lord Tomnoddy were blind 
to these disadvantages, and saw much to 
dislike in the successful wooer from over 
the seas. They avenged them'selves in 
the oddest Way. They ridiculed the Prince 
because he disliked long sittings over after- 
dinner wine ; and again because, after a 
morning's shooting, he went home for 
luncheon. They said he could not ride, and 
were dumbfounded with astonishment when 
they saw him going well with the Belvoir 
hounds. They accused him' of cowardice, 
or at least sympathy with cowardice, 
because he set his face against the damn- 
able wickedness of duelling. Oddest of 
all, they affirmed that he was a Roman 
Catholic in disguise, whereas he was a 
Lutheran with latitudinarian sympathies. 

221 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Some more obvious reasons for unpopu- 
larity could be traced in the Prince's char- 
acter and conduct. In the first place, he 
was undeniably a foreigner, and seventy 
years ago foreigners were quite as unpopular 
in England as they are to-day. Of 
course the Royal Family were of German 
extraction ; but from' long residence in the 
country had lost nearly all trace of Ger- 
manism. Queen Victoria's uncles had been 
bluff English gentlemen, of gracious presence 
and hearty bearing ; properly dignified on 
public occasions, but overflowing with jollity 
in private life ; and it Was an abrupt 
change from them to this reserved and 
meditative stripling. Gladstone, who loved 
him sincerely, has recorded a ti^ait which 
certainly could not conduce to popularity : — • 

A mildly foreign mark upon his exterior and manner, 
together with a perpetual endeavour to turn every 
man's conversation, every man's particular gift and 
knowledge, to account for his own mental improve- 
ment, most laudable as it was, yet may have prevented 
his attaining that charm of absolute ease in his 
intercourse with the world which he possessed in 
the circle of his family. 

222 



^A^ UNCROWNED KING 

That thirst for information, though, as 
Gladstone calls it, " most laudable," must 
have been a little uncomfortable in society, 
especially when the person questioned did 
not feel very sure of his ground ; and 
the lack of " ease " in the Prince's public 
manner made an unfavourable impression 
on those who had no opportunity of seeing 
him in private life. He was thought to 
insist unduly on small points of etiquette, 
and to be horrified if a guest stood on 
the hearthrug after dinner. It was re- 
ported that the Queen said to a delicate 
lady : " Pray sit down, and, when the 
Prince comes into the room', Lady Douro " 
(an ample natron) " can stand in front of 
you." People saw the ladies of the Court 
standing in the Royal Opera Box while 
the Prince sate through the long perform- 
ance. Thackeray, in the Book of\ Snobs, 
made fun of the ritual of Royal shooting, 
as depicted in the Court Circular. In 
a word, people thought the Prince too 
stiff. 

The thirst for infonnation which Glad- 

223 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

stone described was allied in the Prince 
with a love of instructing. Not only in 
affairs of State and diplorrtacy, but in 
almost every department of national life, 
he caused his views to be made known. 
In things military and naval, in matters 
affecting Public Education, Public Health, 
and the Dwellings of the Poor, in every 
form of art, and in every development of 
science, he was ready with theories and 
advice. Perhaps the most remarkable in- 
stance of this all -pervading activity is the 
letter which he addressed to Samuel Wilber- 
force on his elevation to the Episcopate. 
The writer of the letter was then twenty - 
six years old, a foreigner by birth and 
education who had lived four years in 
England, and a Lutheran by religious pro- 
fession. The recipient of the letter was 
forty, an Englishman by birth and educa- 
tion, reared in the strictest traditions of 
English Churchmanship, and himself in turn 
a Parish Priest, an Archdeacon, a Dean, 
and now "a called Apostle." The letter 
is a serene and thoughtful discourse on 
224 



AN UNCROWNED KING 

the duties of an English Bishop ; the Hne 
which he should take in Parliament, and 
the attitude which he ought to maintain 
towards those of "other confessions." It 
is certainly a rem'arkable composition ; and 
it is only fair to add that it concludes 
with a half-tone of apology : "I have 
spoken as thoughts have struck me, and 
am sure you will be better able than I 
am to take a comprehensive view of the 
position." 

Perhaps enough has now been said to 
account for the fact that the Prince Con- 
sort was unpopular, and more than enough 
to explain the violent reaction Which ensued 
on his death. On the 23rd of April, 1862, 
Gladstone, speaking in Manchester before 
" the Association of Lancashire and Cheshire 
Mechanics' Institutes," said : " In the ancient 
Palace of our Kings a Womian's heart lies 
bleeding " ; and the unanimous outburst 
of sympathy with the widowed Queen was 
accompanied by sincere though unavailing 
regrets. All at once the nation realized 
what the Queen had lost. The clouds of 
p 225 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

misapprehension and injustice were blown 
away by the breath of a new spirit, and 
people saw revealed a character singularly 
pure, lofty, and duty -loving, and a life 
devoted to the service of England. The 
reaction ran, as popular reactions commonly 
run, to ridiculous excess. The face of 
the country was studded with memorials 
to the Prince, like knots in network, and 
books purporting to describe his character 
and tell his life poured from' the press. 
Besides a vast profusion of these un- 
authorized efforts, the Queen in 1867 
commanded the publication of The Early^ 
Years of the Prince Consort. This was 
followed by Leaves from the Journal of 
oar Life in the Highlands, written by the 
Queen herself. The Prince's Speeches were 
edited, with an instructive Introduction, by 
Sir Arthur Helps. Between the years 1875 
and 1880 the Authorized Life of the P.rince 
Consort was published in instalments by 
Sir Theodore Martin . Quite recently we 
have had three volumes of the Queen's 

Letters and two of her Early Journals, 
226 



AN UNCROWNED KING 

in all of which Prince Albert plays 
a prominent part ; not to mention the 
innumerable host of Memoirs and Recol- 
lections by various onlookers who from 
time to time came in contact with 
him. Lord Esher tells us, in solemn 
tones, that " it m'ay be many years before 
it would be wise or prudent to make public 
any more of the private histoiy of Queen 
Victoria's reign." So far as that history 
concerns the Prince Consort, we have 
already had enough of it. Abundant 
material is now available for any one who 
wishes to estimate the character of that 
remarkable man, and to place him in due 
relation with the events of his time. A 
persistent attempt to exaggerate his great- 
ness, and to insist on all his opinions as 
infallibly true, can only result in the pro- 
duction of unpleasant counterblasts, such 
as The Married Life of Queen Victoria. 
In that book much labour has been mis- 
applied to the collection of every scurrilous 
rhyme and paragraph, and every insolent 
caricature, by which malicious partisans 

22f 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

chose to annoy the Prince, and through 
him the Queen ; his smallest foibles and 
errors are held up to contumely, some of 
his most conspicuous virtues are ridiculed 
or denied, and his m'arried life is repre- 
sented as a series of mbrtifications . Yet 
even the writer of that ill-conditioned book 
was forced to end upon the note of eulogy : — 
" The lasting work of the Prince Consort 
was not that upon which he had expended 
his energies and his life, for he did not 
increase the Monarchical poWer in England 
—it was the pulling of the Crown per- 
manently out of the Georgian rmid, and 
proving that those in high places could 
be virtuous and intellectual." 



328 



Ill 

MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE 

" Sure enough ! it is Rip Van Winkle — 
it is himself ! Welcome home again, old 
neighbour ! Why, where have you been 
these twenty long years ? " 

" Rip's story was soon told, for the whole 
twenty years had been to him but as 
one night. The neighbours stared when 
they heard it ; some were seen to wink 
at each other, and put their tongues in 
their cheeks." 

Washington Irving must, I suppose, be 
included in that remarkable company of 
authors (cbntaining Scott, Macaulay, Dickens, 
and George Eliot) of whom the High- 
brows tell us that " nobody reads them 
now." But I belong to a less supercilious 
generation, and The Sketch Book, with 

Irving's delightful version of Rip Van 

229 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Winkle's history, recurred to my memory 
when I read, in the Coniliitl Magazine, a 
paper by Dr. W. H. Fitchett on "A 
Curious Chapter in WelHngton's Life." 

Dr. Eitchett's slumber seems to have 
lasted even longer than Van ^Winkle's, for 
the world has. been acquainted with 
"Miss J.," and her remarkable flirtation, 
ever since the year 1889. ^^^ ^^^'^^ Y^^** 
an American firm published The Letters 
of the Duke of Wellington to Miss J., 
1 834-1 8 5 I," and they were pwrom^ptly repro- 
duced in England by the enterprise of 
Mr. T. Fisher Unwin. I do not know 
whether the book attained any wide circu- 
lation, but among such as are interested 
in the curiosities of literature it was 
welcomed with effusion. It became, like 
Leaves from the Journal of our Life in 
the Highlands, and Tlie Diary, of a Nobody, 
the oracle of a circle. It was freely 
quoted, and copiously reviewed. Some of 
its choicest phrases became catchwords. An 
enormous discourse founded on it, as a 
sermon is founded on a text, may be read 
230 



MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE 

in the Spectator for the 1 1 th of January, 
1890, and no one who remembers the spirit 
of that exemplary, paper, when Hutton ruled 
it, will be suiprised to learn from it that 
the Duke of Wellington, " deep down in 
his nature was religious — a firm, reverent 
believer." It v/as inevitable that a critic 
who took this view should misunderstand 
the correspondence, iwhich reveals nothing 
of the Duke's beliefs, but a greait deal 
of Miss J.'s. 

While serious people took the book 
seriously, 

Historians add that there were some who laughed. 

They believed that the whole affair was 
an ingenious hoax, designed to attract 
dollars by the spell of aristocratic mystery ; 
and there certainly was a good deal to 
justify this unworthy suspicion. The book 
purported to be edited by " Christine Ter- 
hune Herrick " — a. name which in itself 
conveys a sense of unreality — and to be 
compiled from a mass of papers which 
had " lain for years in a trunk in the attic 

231 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

of a country house within thirty miles of 
New York City." It does not need a 
very sceptical temper to suspect fraud in 
a literary curiosity thus engendered. 

While some were thus swayed by external 
evidence^ others found internal evidence not 
less damaging. If I remember aright, the 
late Duke of Wellington pronounced unhesi- 
tatingly against the genuineness of the letters, 
founding himself on the fact that they 
constantly refer to " Strathfieldsaye," whereas 
his grandfather always contracted the word 
into " S-Saye," or, if he wrote it in full, 
spelled it " Stratfieldsaye." One theory was 
that the discoverer or inventor of the letters 
had created a " Miss J." out of some 
confused recollections of a lady celebrated 
in her day^ — " Mrs. Jones of Pantglas " 
— whom the Duke was known to hold in 
high esteem. I Another possible candidate 

' This lad}', born Margaret Charlotte Campbell, was 
a niece of Lord Chancellor Campbell, and became by 
her second marriage Lady Levinge. The letters which 
she received from the Duke of Wellington were pub- 
lished a few years ago in an American review. 
232 



MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE 



for the honour of being " Miss J." was 
the Hon. Mary Ann Jervis, whom the Duke 
always called "The Syren." i Although, 
on his own. showing, he was " old enough 
to be her great-grandfather," he paid her 
elaborate attentions, and corresponded with 
her freely. Miss Jervis, on the other hand, 
made no secret of her willingness to be 
Duchess of Wellington. 

So the laughers laughed, and the critics 
criticized ; but the pi-esent waiter, although 
he was fully alive both to' the positive 
comicality, and to the possible humbug, 
of the whole affair, always held fast to 
the belief that the letters were genuine. 
He — or to speak more simply, I — had been 
trained, by those who remembered the Duke, 
to remark the strong coinmon -sense which 
always characterized his utterances ; and 
common -sense is precisely the quality which 
is most conspicuous in these letters. Further- 
more, I was a student of style and I 

' This lady was a daughter of the second Lord 
St. Vincent, and was married first to David Dyce 
Sombre and secondly to Lord Forester. 

233 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

did not believe that there was a wi-iter 
alive who could imitate so exactly the 
Duke's epistolary mannerisms. After a lapse 
of ten years, my faith was rewarded by 
proof. In 1899 Sir Herbert Maxwell 
published his excellent Ll^e of Welllngfon, 
and in it he dealt at length' with the 
case of " Miss J.," writing neither as a 
convinced believer nor as a formal sceptic. 
After the book had been printed, but 
before it was published. Sir Herbert 
discovered that the Duke's letters " were 
in the hands of a private collector," ' 
who permitted him to examine them. 
" Having done so critically, I have not 
the slightest hesitation in pronouncing them 
to be genuine. There remains not a 
shadow of doubt that all the letters are 
in the Duke's own hand. Most of them 
are addressed to Miss A. M. Jenkins, 
No. 42 Charlotte Street, Portland Place, 
a few having been sent to the care of 
a tradesman in the same street. The 
discrepancy in the spelling of Strathfield- 

' Qy — Lord Rosebery ? 
234 



MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE 

s,aye arises from the printer of the letters 
having extended the Duke's contraction, 
S-Saye, into the full name." 

Since 1899 we have all had a good deal 
to think about, and attention has, been 
diverted from the Duke of Wellington's 
flirtations to topics of more pressing interest. 
Dr. Fitchett, living apparently in a happy 
remoteness from actual affairs, has done 
a good service to the piublic by recalling 
its attention to a really amusing and for- 
gotten book. But his interpretation of the 
correspondence does not convince me, and 
I shall restate the case as it presents 
itself to a mundane mind 

Anna Maria Jenkins (1814-62) be- 
longed, we are told, to " the smaller 
English gentry," and was an orphan. 
She twas profoundly, practically, and en- 
thusiastically religious ; and, using the 
word " enthusiastic " in the sense in which 
it was used in the eighteenth century, I 
mean no disparagement. Her religion was 
of the OEvangelical type, and she evan- 
gelized wherever she went, even minister- 

235 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

ing to a murderer in the condemned cell, 
and leading hlnl to confession and repent- 
ance. " It was not so common then as 
now to make pets of condemned prisoners ; 
and the success of this young girl in 
subduing a man with whom priests and 
parsons had hopelessly laboured, created 
a sensation and called forth comment from 
the Press." 

By a transition of ideas not -easily 
traceable, Miss Jenkins came to think that, 
after shriving the murderer, her next duty 
was to convert the Duke of Wellington, 
who was now sixty -five years old, con- 
queror of Napoleon, ex-Prime Minister of 
England, and — what is perhaps mm'e to 
her purpose — a. widower. It is only fair 
to Miss Jenkins to say that she never 
concealed from herself the fact that she 
wished to be Duchess of Wellington. 
" She believed it was the will of God 
that she should become the wife of the 
Duke." But, as she had in girlhood refused 
a suitor because he was not sufficiently 
religious, so now she determined to cou- 
236 



MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE 

vert the t)uke before she became his wife. 
•With this high end in view, she addressed 
to him, on the i 5th of January, 1834, a letter 
" on the necessity, of a new birth unto 
righteousness",; and three days later the 
Duke rvvrote his answer— the first of the 
390 letters which compose the series. 
Curiously enough, this letter was not pre- 
served ; but we are told that the Duke 
made two blots and put a wrong date, 
and these symptoms Miss Jenkins attri- 
buted to " the feelings which overwhelmed 
him on the receipt of my epistle." Three 
months later Miss Jenkins, who had now 
come to live in London, went to Apsley 
House, and left there for the Duke's 
acceptance a Bible, with "a suitable note." 
To this note the Duke replied that he 
would like to meet the writer ; Miss Jenkins 
immediately conceded the privilege, and 
asked the Duke to call on her. The great 
man replied : " Although the Duke is not 
in the habit of visiting young unmarried 
ladies with whom he is not acquainted, 
he will not decline to attend Miss J." 

237 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

And on the 12th of November, 1834, the 
first interview took place. 

Here it is necessary to mention one 
all-important trait which was omitted above. 
We are told that Miss Jenkins was " a 
very beautiful woman." In all ages of 
the Church, beautiful saints have exercised 
great power over inflammable sinners ; and 
the Duke, who had seen much of beauty 
but not much of saintship, seem's to have 
succumbed instantly to the double spell. 
•When the day for the Duke's visit arrived, 
Miss Jenkins prayed for divine guidance 
in every incident of it, " even my dress " ; 
and she regarded it as an answer to 
prayer that, when her illustrious visitor was 
announced, she was wearing her " old 
turned dark merino gown, da'dy worn," 
and was not " decorated in any way likely 
to attract notice." 

But, in spite of these providential pre- 
cautions, the spell did its work. Miss 
Jenkins " offered her hand " to her visitor, 
who " received it graciously and respect- 
fully." The oddly assorted couple then sat 
238 



MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE 

down, one on each side of the fire-place ; 
Miss Jenkins produced her " large, beautiful 
Bible," opened it at the third chapter of 
St. John, and began to p)reach on the 
necessity of the New Birth, " pointing her 
finger emphatically, with the solemnity so 
important an occasion demanded." The 
sermon was abruptly closed, for the Duke, 
from whom " all power of speech seemed 
to be withdrawn," suddenly seized the 
preacher's hand and exclaimed : " Oh ! how 
I love you ! Hoiv I love you ! " This was 
his first utterance — ^and quite enough', too, 
for a first visit. 

When the Duke took his leave, he asked 
Miss Jenkins to write to him, and this 
she promised to do ; but she felt what 
Quakers call " a stop in her mind," and 
did not keep her promise. Twice the 
Duke enquired the reason for this silence, 
and, receiving no answer, called again. On 
this occasion he behaved even more ecsta- 
tically than before, exclaiming : " This must 
be for life ! " But what was to "be 
for hfe " ? He did not propose marriage. 

239 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

A fortnight elapsed, and Miss Jenkins, 
having considered the situation, wrote to 
the Duke that his visits had better cease, 
" as they are of so different a nature from 
those I anticipated." The Duke replied 
that he " entirely, concurred " in this 
decision. By so replying, he irritated the 
lady past endurance ; and she wrote him 
a letter which faintly uttered the feelings 
of her indignant soul. She told him that, 
if she had suspected him of anything but 
an honourable intention, she would have 
" spurned him from her as a serpent whose 
sting was capable of producing not only 
instantaneous but eternal death " — with much 
more to the same effect. The Duke 
apologized ; friendly intercourse was renewed, 
anid the correspondence waxed brisker than 
before. Very often the correspondents 
nearly quarrelled. The lady was beyond 
measure peevish, exacting, and ready to 
take offence. The Duke was uniformly 
good-tempered, though terse. Thus, if her 
overweight letters (were returned, Miss Jenkins 
thought an insult was intended, but the 
240 



MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE 

Duke quietly explained the law of franks 
and postage. If the Duke sealed with' a 
plain seal, instead of his armorial bear- 
ings, Miss Jenkins thought herself treated 
with disrespect, and the Duke explained 
that the armorial seal sometimes got too 
hot for use : if he used black wax. Miss 
Jenkins must know the reason why. The 
Duke wrote rather illegibly ; Miss Jenkins 
misconstrued his words, and the Duke 
wrote patient explanations. Once Miss 
Jenkins was annoyed by a fellow-traveller 
in a stage-coach who indulged in blas- 
phemy. When this occurrence was reported 
to the Duke, he took no notice, and was 
sharply rebuked for his indifference to her 
outraged feelings ; but he was quite equal 
to the occasion — " I don't consider with 
you that it is necessary to enter into a 
disputation with every wandering blasphemer. 
Much must depend upon the circumstances." 
Sometimes he substituted his initial for 
his signature, and w'as promptly asked if 
he intended a disrespectful familiarity : to 
which he replied that " the most important 
Q 241 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



parts of a letter were its contents," and 
that he " never much considered the 
signature, provided he knew the hand- 
writing." 

After this last instance of unreason on 
his friend's part, the Duke's equanimity 
seems to have given away, and he marked 
his annoyance by writing in the third 
person . Even worse — he burned her 
letters, and thereby, in her judgment, 
committed "a sin in the sight of God, 
in destroying epistles intended for his 
everlasting good." But, as she kept copies, 
no harm was done. Presently, the first 
person was resumed, and Miss Jenkins noted 
the change with unconcealed satisfaction ; 
she still kept a watchful eye on the 
Duke's doings, and never failed to read 
him a spiritual lesson when she got the 
chance. The Duke had a fall and 
bruised his knee, and Miss Jenkins promptly 
reminded him that " it is not in man that 
walketh to direct his steps — a divine lesson 
which I was so anxious from time to 
time to impress upon his mind." When 
242 



MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE 

the Duke got about again, he hastened 
to visit Miss Jenkins, and, when she asked 
him how his knee was getting on, " he 
appeared delighted, pushing up his chair 
nearer to mie, which of course met with the 
withdrawal on my part due to Christianity." 
During the year 1836 Miss Jenkins 
received fifty-six letters from her illustrious 
admirer. On the i 5th of November, he wi^ote 
that he was coming to London, and was 
at her service if she wished for a visit. 
On this the lady comments as follows 
in her diary : " How little did the poor 
Duke think when he wrote thus that the 
great Lord of lords had decreed he 
should not behold me again for nearly 
eight years — ^namely, until the summer of 
1844. O how mysterious are His unerring 
ways ! " But, although the Duke did not 
see this enchantress for " nearly eight 
years," bodily separation had no effect on 
the exchange of thoughts. They corre- 
sponded incessantly ; she preaching, scold- 
ing, and complaining ; he accepting her 
rebukes, explaining, and when needful, 

243 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

apologizing — " The Duke of Wellington 
presents His Compliments to Miss Jenkins. 
She is quite mistaken. He has no Lock 
of Hair of Her's. He never had one, 
The Duke is not aware that he has 
been guilty of presuniption, of daring 
presumption y 

As the Duke was born in 1769, it must 
have been about the year 1839 that he 
wrote the following rebuff. " What would 
be said if I, a man of seventy years of 
age, nearly, was to take in marriage a 
lady young enough to be my grand- 
daughter?" Poor Miss Jenkins! It was 
the rebuke of a vaulting ambition, which 
is thus expressed in her diary : " I looked 
forward to becoming as ' a city set on a 
hill, which cannot be hid,' conceiving such 
exaltation would admit of showing forth' 
His praises openly before men." A subtle 
attempt in the same direction is reflected 
in a letter of the Duke written in 1840 — 
" The Duke is very sensible of Miss 
Jenkins's offer of service in case the 
Duke should be sick or afiflicted. The 
244 



I 



MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE 

Duke is much obliged to her. He is 
quite well. He has no reason to believe 
that he will have occasion to trouble her 
upon any subject whatever." 

Influenced, I suppose, by motives of 
self-preservation, the Duke now ceased to 
write. From 1840 to 1844 Miss Jenkins 
received no letter from him ; but, nothing 
daunted, she continued to ply him with 
advice, " as the Lord condescendingly in- 
fluenced me." On the loth of June, 1844, 
the Duke replied comprehensively to all these 
hortations, and professed himself " very 
sensible of your kindness in giving me 
so continually such good Counsel." The 
correspondence now resumed all its former 
briskness, and before long the spell of 
the enchantress prevailed. At the ead of 
August the Duke again paid her a visit, 
being dogged, to his great annoyance, by 
a band of observers, who probably thought 
they had caught the great man in some 
discreditable adventure. This tiresome in- 
cident seems to have had its effect upon 
the Duke, for soon afterwards his visits 

245 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

ceased for ever. He was bne of the 
busiest men in England. " I am employed," 
he wrote, " every day from six in the 
morning till twelve at night "—but, unless 
he promptly answered every scrap of 
written nonsense and paid frequent calls, 
Miss Jenkins gave him' no peace. In 
June 1845 she wrote him one of her 
customary rebukes, " little imagining that 
the Lord of lords had decreed he should 
never call again, knowing far better what is 
good for us than we do for ourselves." In 
spite of this, the correspondence continued 
for some time on its accustomed lines ; 
but a fatal rupture was at hand. Miss 
Jenkins took a cottage in thei country, and 
required some money to furnish it. She 
consulted the Duke on the subject and 
he, apparently by mistake, understood that 
she wished to borrow the money from 
him, and seemed quite ready to lend it. 
This suggestion she regarded as an insult, 
and rebuked in her most vigorous terms. 
But shortly afterwards she fell into bad 
health; her illness required a good many 
246 



MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE 

comforts, and her means were suddenly 
diminished to vanishing-point. In this 
step she boldly told the Duke of her 
needs :— 

It would appear that it is the will of God to place 
my life, humanly speaking, in your hands, as the 
friend, next to Himself, most dear to the heart of 

Yours devotedly, 

A.J. 

The Duke replied with prompt and 
practical kindness, asking what was the 
sum required, and where it should be 
paid. But poor Miss Jenkins, irritated 
by illness and poverty, treated these very 
natural enquiries as fresh insults. She 
had no banker, knew nothing of business, 
could not and would not answer the 
Duke's questions. She apparently thought 
it his duty to undertake the cost of her 
maintenance, without entering into details 
of more or less, when or how ; and, when 
he demurred to this erratic way of' doing 
business, she told him roundly that she 
would " rather beg her bread from door 

247 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

to door than receive a favour at such 
hands." i 

Ira' antaiitiunt— soon the correspondence 
was renewed : by Miss Jenkins with 
" changed feelings " ; by the Duke with 
unchanged patience. The lady still toiled 
indefatigably for his " regeneration," and 
he persisted in replying that he did his 
duty to the best of his ability, and could 
not concur in Miss Jenkins's view of it. On 
the loth of March, 185 i, he wrote the last 
letter in this extraordinary correspondence. 
It concludes with these words : — 

I know well that Miss Jenkins's Mind is occupied 
by Reflections on Spiritual things ; and that she must 
despise the occupation of one who considers it His 
duty to serve the Public to the best of His Ability ! 
With due respect for Her Higher occupations, I hope 
she will excuse my adhering to my own Course of 
duty ! 

Ever Miss Jenkins's most faithfully obedient, 

Humble Servant, 

Wellington. 

In September 1852 the Duke died. Soon 
afterwards Miss Jenkins left England to 
join her married sister in the United States ; 
248 



MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE 

but " iher peculiarities had developed so 
unpleasantly that the two could not live 
peacefully in the same house." She died 
in 1862, and was disinterred, twenty -seven 
years later, by Christine Terhune Herrick. 



249 



IV 

A NEST OF WHIGGERY 

Though my title may be rather reminis- 
cent of Shakespeare's " nest of spicery," still 
nothing offensive is intended. A bird reared 
in the Nest of Whiggery could never befoul 
it or belittle it ; though perhaps he might 
perceive, with advancing years, that it had 
some laughable aspects. "The Sacred 
Circle of the Great -Grandm'otherhood," 
though used as a gibe by Beresford-Hope, 
was the expression of a serious truth, and 
the Early Correspondence of Lord John 
Russell, given to the world by his son, 
Mr. RoUo Russell, illustrates that truth 
afresh. I The book is a Book of Russells. 
On every page a Russell writes to a Russell 

' Early Correspondence of Lord John Russell, 1805-1840. 
Edited by his son, Rollo Russell. 
250 



A NEST OF WHIGGERY 

— Amurath to Amurath— and a Russell 
makes reply. Each Russell adores the 
Russell to whom he or she is writing, 
and the principal topics of the Corre- 
spondence are the virtuous doings of the 
other Russells. When a letter is headed 
as from or to " Russell," without prefix 
or suffix, the person indicated is Lord 
John Russell— afterwards Earl Russell, and 
twice Prim'e Minister. The rest of the 
family are distinguished by Christian names ; 
but, as those names were frequently repeated 
in successive generations, it is not always 
easy to discern identities. Thus the letters 
refer to two Lord John Russells, two Lady 
John Russells, two Lord William Russells, 
Lady WillianK Russell, Lady Rachel Russell, 
Gertrude Russell, and, as in private duty 
bound, to " William Lord Russell, the 
Martyr." The Martyr, indeed, was well 
out of the way, having lost his head in 
1683; but at the period w^hich the Letters 
cover— 1805-40— there were four William 
Russells in being, and to distinguish 
between them is a task which has some- 

251 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

times baffled even the editor. Then, 
besides the characters who were palpably 
and by designation Russells, there are a 
good mJany concealed Russells lurking in 
the book— twb Dukes of Bedford, a Duchess 
of Bedford, a Lord TaVistock, a Lady 
Tavistock, a Duchess of Abercorn, a Lady 
Georgiana Romilly. Trace the " Circle," 
and it is found to contain Cowers, Howards, 
Vemons, Capels, Keppels, Cavendishes, and 
Ponsonbys, all of whom figure largely in 
these pages ; stretch it a little, and it 
includes (by Virtue of relationship to the 
Russells) Byngs, Thynnes, Bridgemans, 
Seymours, Clives, Gordons, Montagus, 
Listers, Abercrombys, and Elliots. Outside 
the " Circle " so far as blood was con- 
cerned, but closely allied] to it by senti- 
ment and aim, were Eoxes, Greys, L'ambtons, 
Spencers, Fortescues, EUices, Fitzmaurices, 
and Lambs— in short, all the famous names 
of Whiggcry. Macaulay, though born out- 
side the " Circle," had found his way into 
it by political affinity ; Stanley, afterwards 
the great Lord Derby, wlas born in it, but 
252 



A NEST OF WHIGGERY 

worked his way out ; and Brougham, also 
an aUen by birth, was som'etimes inside it 
and oftener not. Moore sang its praises 
to an Irish harp, Horner and Mackintosh 
supphed it with a philosophy, Rogers 
feasted it, and its Domestic Chaplain was 
Sydney Smith. 

I have thus enumerated some of the 
company who contributed to the Corre- 
spondence now before us, and it is time 
to turn from the writers to the things 
written. The letters are, as a rule, easy, 
familiar, rather sHpshod, and, when the 
Writer wrote an exceptionally bad hand, 
not always intelligible. But they deal With 
a momentous period, and with such con- 
troversies at home and abroad as try the 
pith and marrow of political character. 
Throughout they breathe what was best 
in the spirit of Whiggery — vehement hatred 
of tyranny and oppression, firm regard for 
law and order, patient zeal for cautious 
progress, and a proud contempt for pres- 
sure, whether applied from above or from 
below. John, sixth Duke of Bedford (Lord 

253 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

John Russell's father) was a Whig of the 
deepest dye. " The principles of Whiggism," 
he said, " have taken such deep root in my 
breast that nothing can shake them whilst 
Life and Reason remain within me." He 
had been Viceroy of Ireland in the Adminis- 
tration of " All the Talents," and had in- 
curred some censure for what was thought 
the undue lenity of his administration. In 
1 8 1 7, looking back over ten years, he 
wrote : "I was urged to resort to strong 
measures and put in force the Insurrection 
Act. I felt convinced in my own mind 
that the ordinary operations of the law, 
administered in a combined spirit of temper 
and firmness, were sufficient to put an end 
to the disturbances, and the result justified 
my opinion." The Duke's Irish experience 
dictated his Enghsh policy at a moment 
when England was seething with discontent. 

If strong and conceive measures should now be 
adopted by Parliament, if the Right of Petition should 
be unnecessarily infringed, if the power of the Crown 
should be strengthened for the sole purpose of 
abridging the People's liberties, then indeed will the 
breach be widened between the Government and the 
254 



A NEST OF WHIGGERY 

People ; then will distrust and suspicion take the place 
of confidence and harmony, and I foresee nothing 
but misery and calamity as the inevitable results. 

Here speaks the Whiggish hatred of 
Tyranny, but the Whiggish mistrust of 
extreme counsels is not far off^ 

If a few factious demagogues have been talking to 
ignorant assemblages of the lower classes about Annual 
Parliaments and Universal Suffrage, the nonsense is 
justly scouted by the great mass of the community, 
and surely we ought not on such insufficient grounds 
to be called upon to " draw an indictment against a 
whole nation." 

Naturally, the letters trace in some 
detail the steps which preceded the Reform 
Act of 1832, and the part played by Lord 
John Russell, acting under Lord Grey and 
in concert with Althorp and Durham. It 
was the great achievement of his long 
life, and it was attained before he was 
forty. In 1826 the "Borough Reeve of 
Manchester " sent him a Resolution of 
Thanks, carried at a Public Meeting, for 
" the important service which, as a Member 
of the House of Commons, he has rendered 

255 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

to the Town of Manchester in furtherance 
of its just claim to be represented in 
ParUament." In 1831, when the fight was 
at its hottest, his brother wrote to him :— 

You have raised a noble spirit in the country, far 
beyond anything I could have imagined. I know no 
sight so grand as a People roused from their apathy, 
determined to assert their rights and freedom. A few 
months ago all was gloomy, dark, sad, and ominous ; 
now all is cheerful, gay, happy, and promising. It 
is like the burst of spring after a severe winter. 

That it proved possible to carry the Bill 
through the Lords, without creating the 
peerages which the King had authorized, 
caused Lord John unfeigned satisfaction. 
" The Pitt party," he said, three years 
later, " has been weakened and not 
strengthened by making so many dull 
country gentlemen duller Lords. And we 
should lose in the same proportion. Two 
or three now and then may be useful, 
but I should regret any large creation." 
" Dull country gentlemen "—here speaks the 
Whig whose various schemes of political 
and educational reform have been retarded 
256 



A NEST OF WHIGGERY 

or defeated by the landed classes. "The 
landed gentry are very respectable, and 
I have always found them kind and 
humane ; but they are certainly the class 
in this country most ignorant, prejudiced, 
and narrow-minded of any. The unedu- 
cated Labourers beat them' hollow in in- 
telligence." This Was written in 1835, 
but fifty years were to elapse before that 
intelligence was allowed to apply itself to 
politics. 

In spite of strong prepossessions. Lord 
John's was always a receptive mind. "I 
am," he said, " very warm in political .ques- 
tions " ; but however " warm " he might 
be in pursuit of a political course, he 
never was ashamed to change his views 
as circumstances changed — ■" ' Bygones are 
bygones ' and ' Alors comme alors ' are two 
great maxims in politics." By 1836 he 
had come to see that the settled policy of 
the House of Lords was such as to demand 
strong action by the Whig Government, 
even though that action approached to 
what a year before he had deprecated. 

R 257 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

He wrote as follows in a Memorandum for 
the Cabinet : — 

It is evident that a majority of the House of Lords 
are comliined, not to stop or alter a particular measure, 
but to stop or alter all measures which may not be 
agreeable to the most powerful, or, in other words, 
the most violent, among their own body. Both the 
Tories and the Radicals have the advantage of a 
definite course with respect to this state of things. 
The Tories praise the wisdom of the Lords, and wish 
to maintain their power undiminished. The Radicals 
complain of a mischievous obstacle to good govern- 
ment, and purpose an elective House of Lords. The 
Ministers stand in the position of confessing the evil 
and not consenting to the remedy. ... It is possible, 
nay probable, that if the Tories could see a steady and 
gradual creation of Peers, to meet their obstinate 
resistance, they would be disposed to yield. Before 
the passing of the Reform Bill they were coerced by 
the dread of a large creation, and by that alone. It 
appears to me, therefore, that this opportunity should 
be taken for the creation of eight, ten, or twelve peers, 
and the Ministry be prepared to advise a similar 
measure whenever it is provoked. 

The love of justice was as strongly 
marked in Russell as the love of freedom. 
■He could make no terms with what he 
thought one-sided or oppressive. Mel- 
bourne strangely held that the fact that a 
258 



A NEST OF WHIGGERY 

man was " a trader " necessarily disqualified 
him for the magistracy, apparently on the 
ground that his private interests might clash 
with his official duties. Russell replied that, 
" if the principle was worth anything, 
country gentlemen ought not to judge 
about hares and pheasants." When the 
starving labourers of Dorset combined in 
an association which they did not know 
to be illegal, he urged that incendiaries 
in high places, such as the Duke of Cum- 
berland and Lord Wynford, were " far more 
guilty than the labourers, but the law does 
not reach them, I fear." When a reform 
of the judicature became manifestly neces- 
sary, and was resisted on the ground of 
expense, he wrote : "I am' not deterred 
by that argument, so long as the object 
is to give the suitor justice. If you cannot 
afford to do justice speedily and well, you 
may as well shut up the Exchequer and 
confess that you have no right to raise 
taxes for the protection of the subject, for 
Justice is the great and primary end of 
government." 

259 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Although, as these extracts show, the 
interest of the letters is mainly political, 
they contain here and there fragments of 
lighter stuff. It appears to have been 
Sheridan who said of Lord Lauderdale what 
was often repeated of a later statesman 

(also Scotch), " A joke of 's is no 

laughing matter." Fox's useful maxim for 
debate was " to say strong things, but not 
in strong language." Shelley justified the 
immoralities of Laon and Cynthia on the 
ground that, being " much confined within 
the circle of his own thoughts, he had 
formed to himself a very different measure 
of approbation or disapprobation for actions 
than that which is in use among mankind." 
Melbourne's opinion of Archbishop Whately 
is worth recalling — " It is impossible to be 
with him for ten minutes upon affairs with- 
out perceiving not only that he can do no 
business, but that no business can be done 
where he is." Brougham's rule for social 
discussion, if not tending to make things 
pleasant, was, as he said, " simple " — " I 
always oppose whatever I hear said. If 
260 



A NEST OF WHIGGERY 

A abuses B, I defend B, and vice versa.'' 
An author sent a copy of his book to 
Lord John as "an offering to one whose 
name is indissolubly connected with the 
Historical Literature of this country, and 
who has begun by writing, and progressed 
by acting, History." Surely the author 
must have been the young Disraeli ? No ; 
it was Bulwer-Lytton. 



261 



V 

DEMAGOGUES 

When the aristocratic reformer in Sybil 
absurdly told the Chartist's daughter that 
the Aristocracy were the natural leaders 
of the People^ she replied, with excellent 
sense : " The leaders of the People are 
those whom' the People trust." The 
demagogue must have the faculty of 
making great masses of people believe that 
he is in earnest, that he sees quite clearly 
the ends which he would secure, and that 
he will not flinch from a fight when the 
time for fighting comes. It was one of 
Lincoln's best sayings that " You can fool 
all the people some of the time, and som.e 
of the people all the tim'e, but you can't 
fool all the people all the time." The 
downfalls of demagogues— and history records 
plenty of them— occur when people dis- 
262 



DEMAGOGUES 



cover that they have been " fooled," and 
that the orator who promised to lead them 
to victory was false to the cause, or shrank 
from the inevitable conflict. I say " the 
orator," for oratory has in all ages been 
the chief instrument of the demagogue. 
Of course the spoken word reaches only, 
at the most, a few thousand hearers, whereas 
the Press has an incalculable range ; but it 
is the personal contact with an audience — 
the m'agic of eye and voice and tone and 
gesture— that gives the demagogue his 
power. 

The nineteenth century was peculiarly 
rich in demagogues ; they sprang from' all 
ranks ; they had been trained by various 
processes ; they preached .quite diverse doc- 
trines ; but they all had the faculty of 
speaking to great masses of their country- 
men in a way which carried conviction 
and excited passion. Each had his turn, 
his fame, his following. Of each, succes- 
sively, it was said : " He is the greatest 
demagogue England has ever seen " ; but 
for most of them the end was failure 

263 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

and collapse ; and few indeed are their 
memorials . 

I put Daniel O'Connell in the forefront 
of my list because he combined in the 
highest perfection the physical, embtional, 
and histrionic powers which go to make 
the demagogue. His voice of music travelled 
fabulous distances ; he played at will on 
every emotion of the hearer's heart ; he 
could dissolve a huge audience in laughter 
or in tears, according to the necessities 
of his theme ; and he loved his country 
and his religion with an inspiring enthu- 
siasm. He lives as " the Liberator," 
but his reign was over long before he 
died. 

If we give the first place to an Irish- 
man, the second belongs of right to a 
Scotsman. Henry Brougham's ungovernable 
eloquence, with its passionate resistance to 
every form of tyranny, and its wrath, and 
bitterness, and clamour, and evil-speaking 
against opponents, was a tradition which 
lasted into our own day. Yet he vanished 
from public observation when he ceased 
264 



DEMAGOGUES 



to be Lord Chancellor in 183 4, and 
lived till 1868 in unhonoured obscurity. 
O'Connell and Brougham' were demagogues 
by instinct, but lawyers by profession ; and 
their training at the Bar Was supposed 
to have developed their natural powers of 
popular appeal. But t\Vo of the most 
effective demagogues of the nineteenth 
century were men who owed nothing to 
professional training. Lord Durham! (1792- 
1840) and Sir Francis Burdett (i 770-1 844) 
were mten who, in birth, education, and 
personal qualities, typified all that is meant 
by aristocracy. Their traditions were those 
of their order, and their habits those of 
country gentlemen, sportsmen, and men of 
fashion. Each had the birthright of a com- 
manding eloquence, each detested tyranny, 
and each was ready to suffer for his faith. 
Burdett 's imprisonment in the Tow*er was 
one of the events which shook the autoc- 
racy of Toryism, and Durham's administra- 
tion of Canada laid the foundations of her 
settled government. But Burdett lived to 
desert the cause of which he had been 

265 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

a confessor, and Durhami died at forty -eight, 
crushed by the ingratitude with which his 
own party had rewarded his work. 

In the stirring times which preceded 
the Reform' Act of 1832 there were no 
more effective demagogues than " Orator " 
Hunt, the hero of the " Manchester Mas- 
sacre " of 1 8 19, who broke the domination 
of the Stanleys at Preston, and then was 
himself broken by recalcitrant Whigs ; and 
Daniel Whittle Harvey, who, after sway- 
ing the London mob as no one since him 
has swayed it, subsided into the Commis- 
sionership of the Metropolitan Police, and 
suppressed the disorder which he had 
formerly fomented. Harvey died in 1863, 
and by that time two notable successors 
had appeared in the democratic politics of 
London. One was George Odger, " the 
inspired shoemaker," and the other Charles 
Bradlaugh. Henry Fawcett considered 
Odger the finest orator he had ever 
heard ; and I have seen Bradlaugh subdue 
the turbulence of an excited mob by merely 
raising his hand. Odger died, as he had 
266 



DEMAGOGUES 



lived, neglected by those who should have 
been his friends, and the dismal doctrines 
which Bradlaugh taught are as dead as 
the Hutchinsonian system*. 

The latter part of the nineteenth century 
was enlivened by two of the most consum- 
mate demagogues whom England has ever 
produced— Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. 
Joseph Chamberlain. Each had an almost 
preternatural insight into the desires, emo- 
tions, and prejudices of the people to whom 
he appealed ; and it is to be observed that, 
though in their popular speeches they took 
diametrically opposite Views of questions 
purely pohtical, they both dug down far 
below the surface of mere politics, and 
addressed themselves to the root -instincts 
of human nature. Neither created political 
opinion, as Bright and Gladstone and Disraeli 
did ; so neither could be called, in the 
highest sense, a political genius. But each 
knew exactly what his hearers wanted, and 
gave it with consummate skill. 

When names so famous have been men- 
tioned, Mr. Lloyd George cannot be offended 

267 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

if he finds hiraself included in the company. 
From' the extraordinary success which has 
attended his pubhc speaking I am inchned 
to draw a moral, which, to me at any 
rate, is exceedingly welcome. People had 
come to believe— and men in high political 
place acted on the belief— that the right 
form of public speaking was dry, hard, 
clear, unemotional, " faultily faultless, icily 
regular "—even "splendidly null." A Par- 
liamentary critic said : " Demosthenes him- 
self would nowadays be no match for a 
careless and jerking speaker who had 
ground down his facts in the mill of Select 
Committees." But Mr. Lloyd George has 
taught us that, now as of old, the 
strongest appeal to the common people 
is the appeal of the emotions. Here is 
an instance : — 

The honour of Britain is not dead. Her might is 
not broken. Her destiny is not iullilled. Her ideals 
are not shattered b)^ her enemies. She is more tlian 
ahve. She is more potent. She is greater than she 
ever was. Her dominions are wider, her influence is 
deeper, her purpose is more exalted than ever. Why 
should her cluldren not sing? 
268 



DEMAGOGUES 



A statesmanlike discourse, committed to 
manuscript or niemoiy^ reads very well 
in next morning's Times, but the true 
spring of oratory is the old Holy Well 
of Romance . 



269 



IV 

FROM ROME TO LONDON 

" At last he came ; the great man in a 
great position, summoned from Rome to 
govern England." In this sentence Lord 
Beaconsfield was describing Sir Robert Peel, 
who made that journey in November 1834. 
King 'William IV had just dismissed his 
Whig Ministers, and had commanded Peel 
to form an Administration. But Peel was 
travelling in Italy, and arrived in hot haste, 
" after a most extraordinarily rapid journey 
of twelve days only, travelling by night 
over precipice and snow, eight nights out 
of the twelve." 

Mr. Asquith's journey has been per- 
formed in a less exhausting fashion, and 
he returns i not to begin, but to continue, 
the work of Premiership ; yet there are 
circumstances in his career which inevit- 

' This was written in 1916. 
270 



FROM ROME TO LONDON 

ably suggest comparison with' Peel, to whom 
of all hi^s predecessors, he bears the closest 
resemblance. Both sprang from the hardy 
north and both' from' the commercial class. 
Both had covered themselves with glory 
at school and at Oxford. Both were en- 
dowed by Nature with an inexhaustible 
faculty for hard work. Both had excep- 
tionally strong constitutions. In both the 
distinguishing quality was hard common 
sense, and both had very early contracted 
a habit of clear and accurate speech, as far 
as possible removed from eloquence, but 
admirably adapted to a business-like assem- 
blage. Both were conspicuously free from 
sentiment and romance ; both held strong 
but not fanatical opinions, and both were 
ready to modify those opinions and to change 
their course as the exigencies of public 
life seemed to require. In two words, 
both were consummate politicians. But 
there were considerable differences between 
the lots of the two men, and those differ- 
ences made themselves felt both in their 
characters and in their actions. 

271 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Peel's father had accumulated great wealth, 
and could bequeath to his son not only 
opulence but an assured position ; Mr. 
Asquith has pushed his way to the front 
with no other aids than the thews and 
sinews of a truly English brain. Peel, 
from his earliest days, had been trained 
by his father for the business of public 
life; when Mr. Asquith went up to Balliol 
he had, I believe, destined himself to the 
Nonconformist ministry. Peel was returned 
to Parliament for a pocket -borough when 
he was twenty-one ; Mr. Asquith toiled 
strenuously at tuition, journalism, and law 
till he was thirty -three. Peel entered the 
Cabinet at 34; Mr. Asquith at 40. Peel 
became Prime Minister at 46; Mr. Asquith 
at 56; but Peel quitted office for ever 
when he was 58; and died at 62; Mr. 
Asquith at 63 is still Prime Minister and 
has, as we all hope, a long spell of 
vigorous life before him. 

Just now, when for the second time 
a Prime Minister is " summoned from 
Rome to govern England," it is interest- 
272 



FROM ROME TO LONDON 

ing to look back, and to see Mr. Asquith' 
as his contemporaries saw him in the 
'seventies : — 

I remember him, says one of these, at the lectern 
in BaUiol Chapel, reading the lessons with a strong, 
equable voice, strange at his age, and with a curiously 
critical air. It was remarked that he always seemed 
to be arguing with the sacred writer, and to be 
conscious of getting the best of it. He had a lean 
and hungry look, with no promise of that broad 
solidity which now confronts the House of Commons. 
There was no eagerness in his manner ; he took 
everything with an air of confidence that often 
bordered on arrogance. 

His academic career, as tested by 
examinations, was sufficiently distinguished, 
but his most decisive superiority was 
attained at the Union. As an under- 
graduate he spoke very much' as he speaks 
to-day, in sentences so exactly constructed 
that they might have been taken down 
verbatim and printed without correction. 
His period at Oxford coincided with a 
marked decline of Liberalism. The Ministry 
of All the Talents, which Gladstone had 
constructed in 1868, was now, as Disraeli 
s 273 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

said, " a range of exhausted volcanoes." 
All its great work was done. The Irish 
Church was disestablished ; the Irish Land 
Act was law ; National Education was 
made compulsory ; Purchase in the Army 
was abolished. A series of blunders and 
follies, cumulative in effect, was now begin- 
ning to destroy the popularity of Gladstone's 
govemm'ent, and every one talked, not without 
reason, about a " Conservative Reaction." 
In the Autumii Term of 1873, ^^-l^r. Asquith 
moved a resolution at the Union to the 
effect " That this House neither believes 
in nor desires the Conservative Reaction " ; 
but before four months were over 
Gladstone and his colleagues had been 
swept out of power, and the " Con- 
servative Reaction " was a dismal reality. 
In 1874 Asquith took his degree and 
vanished from Oxford. The remorse- 
less deep of professional life closed o'er 
the head of Balliol's Lycidas, and people 
who remembered him at Oxford used to 
say : " What an extraordinary place the 
Bar is I There are Stryver and Buzfuz 
274 



FROM ROME TO LONDON 

and Snubbin, making their five thousand 
a year — and even young Pendennis and 
Percy Popjoy doing quite comfortably— but 
one never hears Asquith's name." 

So stood the case at the end of 1885. 
Then came the Home Rule Kite, the sudden 
conversions, the defeated Bill, and the dis- 
solution of 1886. Mr. J. Boyd Kinnear, 
an excellent Liberal, who, since the previous 
November, had sat for East Fife, declined 
to change his views about Ireland, and 
voted against the Home Rule Bill. The 
wire-pullers determined, if possible, to turn 
him out, and, having heard of a young 
man called Asquith, who spoke well and 
was willing to vote for Home Rule, they 
sought him, caught him, and sent him down 
to Fife — with what result we loiow. 

Mr. Asquith's career since August 1886 
belongs to our political history^ and there 
is no need to recapitulate it here. Glad- 
stone was four times Prime Minister, and 
his four Premierships together amounted 
to a little over twelve years. Mr. Asquith 
has been Prime Minister only once, but 

275 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

has already cotnpleted a term of eight 
years : — ■ , 

Is there anything left for ambition ? When the 
highest station is gained, does the noble infirmity 
become a desire for incense and for smoking altars? 
Does the praise of men count for more in itself than 
when tangible prizes were still to be grasped ? Or 
are there yet greater possibilities ? To be leader of 
the dominant party in the State is no small matter ; 
but, if the Party system is in decay, there is room 
for a new departure. Can he create ? 

This question was asked (not by me) 
on the day when Mr. Asquith became 
Prime Minister, and I leave it unanswered. 



276 



VII 
THE POWER OF SPEECH 

To every one who frequented the Oxford 
Union between 1870 and 1874 the name 
of Asquith was a household word. There 
were two Asquiths, brothers ; both, I 
think, of Balhol, and both distinguished 
undergraduates. But, \vhen one mentioned 
" Asquith " in connexion with' the Union 
one meant " H. H." The traditions of 
early oratory are generally misleading, but, 
in this particular case, tradition is amply 
reinforced by memory. In October 1870 
—the first term' ofl Jowett's Mastership; — • 
there came up from the City of London 
School a thin, pale, rather prim-looking 
young Scholar of Balliol, who immediately 
began to make his mark. He was said 
to be a Yorkshireman by birth, but a 
boyhood spent in London had obliterated 

277 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

all resemblance to John Browdie. It was 
understood that he had chosen the Non- 
conformist Ministry as his profession, and 
he seemied likely to play a part similar to 
that played, two or three years later, by 
Mr. R. R. Horton. He was an excellent 
scholar, though by no means of the Eton 
type ; much stronger in his mastery of 
his books than in the elegancies of com- 
position. At Balliol a man had to be, 
whatever else he was, a reader ; and, if 
he had any leisure left over from reading, 
and did not like boating, it was natural 
to bestow it on the XJnion. Asquith's 
leisure was more than most men's, because 
his method of reading was so rapid and 
exhaustive ; and he bestowed it on the 
cultivation of his natural gift of speech. 
If the City of London School possessed 
an institution corresponding to " Pop " at 
Eton, or " Debater " at Harrow, I feel 
sure that young Asquith led the House 
there, as he subsequently led a greater 
one. At Balliol he was heard with awe 
at the mysteriously -named' " Devorgilda," and 
278 



THE POWER OF SPEECH 

from his college his fame spread to the 
Union, which soon got an opportunity of 
judging for itself. 

The verdict was at once, continuously, 
and finally favourable. Some young speakers 
begin on a high level, and gradually slip 
down. Som'e begin in very humble fashion, 
and gradually ascend. H. H. Asquith 
began on the topmost level, and remained 
there till the end. Not that he was what 
is called a " beautiful," or fascinating, 
or moving speaker. Pathos, imagination, 
humour — those Three Graces of oratory — 
were equally and conspicuously absent ; but 
he was cogent, even commanding, in argu- 
ment, shrewd in detecting a fallacy, ruthless 
in exposing it, and ostentatiously conteaipt- 
uous of what he regard'ed as superstition, 
ignorance, or delusion. " I can see and 
hear him now " — writes a contemporary — 
" without the smallest trace of boyish 
rhetoric or epigram, hammering out his 
theme in clear-cut periods of dispassionate 
argument." I believe, as I said on a 
previous page, that, even in those very 

279 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

early days, his speeches might have been 
taken down in shorthand, and sent to 
the Press without the correction of a 
word. Five years is a vast space in the 
shifting Hfe of a University ; but for that 
period, and longer, Asquith remained the 
Plancus of the Oxford Union, and, nascent 
politicians of a later day were told that 
the level of debate was no longer what 
it had been " when Asquith was President." 
He took his degree in 1874, and very 
soon afterwards vanished from an assured 
position at Oxford into the treacherous 
waters of professional life, where the 
waves seemed to close over his head. 
But, even in that submerged period of his 
existence, he was not silent, though he 
appealed to other audiences. As a lecturer 
for University Extension, as an electioneerer 
for the Eighty Club, at legal Debating 
Societies, and (when the solicitors were 
obliging) at the Bar, he was constantly 
speaking, and always with the same verbal 
exactness and logical force. His power 
of speech was by no means his only 
280 



THE POWER OF SPEECH 



equipment, for he was also a vigorous 
and incisive writer, in so much as one 
of his early eulogists thought it necessary 
to assure the solicitors that he had now 
abandoned the dangerous company of the 
Economist and the Spectator. But he 
was, as he always has been, a speaker 
first and foremost, and a speaker, not for 
the mere love of speaking, but with a 
definite purpose and a concrete result. In 
the earlier 'eighties one would have said 
that his speaking was essentially forensic, 
and that the Bar was the place where 
if he only got the chance, his triumphs 
would be won. It was his skilful 
cross-examination of the manager of the 
Times before the Parnell Commission which 
first won him general recognition, and 
even as late as 1895 Gladstone's verdict 
on him was : " Asquith makes a very good 
speech on a legal point." But in the 
field of politics even the hard-bitten hecklers 
of East Eife found him a tough' customer ; 
and experience of the House of Commons, 
with regular participation in debate, con- 

281 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

verted what had been a legal into a 
Parliamentary style. 

At first his speeches were even too 
accurately prepared. " Faultily faultless, 
icily regular," though certainly not " splen- 
didly null." I remember an old Parlia- 
mentarian saying : " Asquith would do 
better if he took his chances a little more 
freely, and risk the plunge without the 
corks." But the habit of over -preparation, 
though it clings to Second Reading speeches, 
cures itself in Committee. When a man 
has to defend or attack the niceties of 
a complicated measure, against opposition 
which may arise at any moment from the 
most unexpected quarter, he learns to 
trust to his stars, and his style gains in 
flexibility what it loses in finish'. Before 
Mr. Asquith had been ten years in the 
House, he could (with all due respect to 
Gladstone's great authority) do much' more 
than make " a very good speech on ' a 
legal point." He did not indeed quite 
equal Sir Edward Grey in thai special 
quality of Parliamentary speaking which 
282 



THE POWER OF SPEECH 

consists in uttering an obvious truth in a; 
convincing form ; but for the ever -varying 
exigencies of official business in the House 
of Commons it would be very hard to 
beat him. 

In one respect, and that certainly not 
the least important, Mr. Asquith sets an 
example to all public speakers — I mean 
his brevity. Of an eminent preacher who 
still enchains us, it has been said that 
he never used one word when twenty 
would do as well. Invert the sentence, 
and you describe Mr. Asquith's speaking. 
Alike the habit of his mind, his taste in 
diction, and the structure of his sentences, 
all tend to brevity. Few men, I should 
think, who have made so many speeches, 
have used so few words and have wasted 
so little time. 

But, in spite of all its merits, Mr. 
Asquith's is not a style which lends itself 
to quotation. It is difficult to recall more 
than one or two phrases which had the 
power of sticking in the memory, or passed 
into the current speech of politics. In the 

283 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Parliament of 1892-5, when the House of 
Lords destroyed or mutilated every Bill 
which the Commons sent up to them, Mr. 
Asquith truly said that the occupation of 
Liberals was " ploughing the sand." In 
more recent times, " -Wait and see " became 
proverbial ; and " I draw my salary " was 
re-echoed with enthusiastic applause. But 
his latest utterance as Prime Minister was 
perhaps his best : " I do not Uke the 
title ' Dictator.' " For my own part, I like 
neither the word nor the thing ; and I 
trust that my friend Mr. Lloyd George 
will restrain any Dictatorial tendencies which 
his colleagues may have acquired in Africa 
or India.' ' 

I Written at the moment when Mr. Lloyd George 
brought Lord Milner and Lord Curzon into his War 
Cabinet. 



284 



VIII 

CONSCIENCE AND ACTION 

It is good for us all, now and then, to 
be driven back from practice to principle. 
It is well to consider whether our con- 
duct, in any department of human life, is 
governed by any moral law, or is merely 
the product of carelessness or self-interest. 
In reply to several correspondents, I have 
recently been urging one particular prin- 
ciple — that Conscience, not expediency or 
convenience, should be our guide in political 
perplexities. Few will be found to gainsay 
this principle when stated abstractedly, but 
now let us look at it " pragmatically," 
observing the effects which it produces 
when practically applied. As soon as we 
so regard it we see that it works c^^uite 
differently in different cases. 

No two consciences are exactly alike. 
Some are torpid, some lively, some seared 

285 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



and horny through habitual misuse, some 
acutely and even painfully sensitive. Of 
the sensitive conscience in political per- 
plexities a leading instance is supplied by 
Gladstone's retirement from' office in 1845, 
when Peel proposed to increase the grant 
to Maynooth. Here was a young and suc- 
cessful statesman who resigned a place in 
the Cabinet sooner than be responsible 
for legislation inconsistent with his earlier 
opinion ; though now he was ready to 
support the very Bill which he would not 
be a party to introducing. No wonder 
that he Was voted whimsical, fantastic, and 
impracticable — " a man whose conscience was 
so tender that he would never go straight." 
Charles Greville said : " Gladstone's expla- 
nation was ludicrous : he only succeeded 
in showing that his resignation was .quite 
uncalled for." And Disraeli wrote : " He 
m!ay have an avenir, but I doubt it." 

The sovereignty of conscience never had 
a more eager champion than the author 
of the Analogy and the Sermons on Human 
Nature, and yet Butler prayed to be 
286 



CONSCIENCE AND ACTION 



delivered from the " offcndiculum of 
scrupulousness " — a real infirmity to which 
the highly sensitive conscience is naturally 
prone. If any man ever passed through 
a long life of public service without 
deviating by a hair's -breadth from' the line 
marked out by conscience, that man was 
John Bright. He jeopardized his seat by, 
opposing the Crimean War ; he sacrificed 
it by opposing the Chinese War. He 
retired from the Cabinet as a protest 
against the bombardment of Alexandria. 
He surrendered the friendships of a life- 
time sooner than comply with the Irish 
demand for self-government. In each of 
those decisive actions we see the working 
of the principle that conscience is supreme ; 
but, when we come to examine the precise 
grounds of his decision against Home Rule, 
some of his admirers perceive " the offeti- 
diculum of scrupulousness." The world in 
general has forgotten the late Lord Caf- 
Qarvon, yet for a good many years he 
filled a large place in the public eye, and 
seemed destined to fill a larger. He was 

287 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

a chivalrous, patriotic, and accomplished 
gentleman, of great nam^ and great estate 
—in short, an ideal leader for the Tory, 
Party, if only he had not so closely resembled 
" that scrupulous good m'an " whom Cowper 
depicted under the name of " Dubius " :— 

He would not with a peremptory tone 
Assert the nose upon his face his own. 

Twice he resigned office in the Tory, 
Cabinet — first when Lord Derby conceded 
Household Suffrage, and secondly when 
Lord Beaconsfield w'as siding with Turkey, 
against Russia. He returned to office as 
Lord -Lieutenant of Ireland, in eager sym- 
pathy with national demands, and found 
himself treacherously, deserted by astuter 
poHticians who had used him. Politically, his 
life was a failure ; morally, it was a triumph . 
So far I have illustrated the working of 
my principle by the cases of men whose 
consciences were exceptionally, and even 
painfully, acute. I turn now, for another 
illustration of that working, to a man of 
a very different type. Nobody ever charged 
288 



CONSCIENCE AND ACTION 

the late Duke of Devonshire with the 
" offendlciiliim of scrupulousness." 'His 
mental nature was singularly clear, simple, 
and direct. His biography has made it 
abundantly plain that, throughout his long 
association with Gladstone, he never learned 
to understand his chief's n:i!ind, or to antici- 
pate his point of View. " The plain -minded 
Whig nobleman, educated at Cambridge 
University, honestly endeavoured to follow 
this great man through the bewildering 
phases of his strange career." When 
allowance is made for an anti-Gladstonian 
bias in the Writer, this sentence is true 
enough, and the " honest endeavour " con- 
stantly landed the owner of the " plain 
mind " in political embarrassments. Again 
and again he felt uneasy ; doubted if he 
was right ; thought he ought to resign ; 
and, in short, experienced all the pangs 
of political indecision. The mere effort 
of making up his mind was distasteful to 
him, aiid that is an effort clearly requited 
of a political leader who leaves his party. 
Twice he made the effort with notable 
T 289 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

result. In 1886 he declined to join Glad- 
stone in his attempt to amtend the govern- 
ment of Ireland. "Mr. Gladstone and I 
do not mean the same thing," he said, 
and he was right. His second, and final, 
severance with Party was forced upon him 
by his conscientious objection to Tariff 
Reform. In opposing Home Rule, he had 
deserted the Party with which his youth 
and middle age had been associated ; in 
opposing Tariff Reform, he cut himself off 
from the Party of which for the last 
eighteen years he had been the most 
important member, 

" Throughout his political career his 
attitude was that of a man refusing to 
be hurried," and his attitude exactly ex- 
pressed his mind. His conscience repudiated 
what Lord Goschen called " a gamble in 
the food of the people," and forced him 
to retire from a Govemm'ent which played 
with it. But in his case the operation 
of conscience was quite unlike what it 
was in Gladstone and Bright and Lord 
Carnarvon. Those highly -strung natures 
290 






CONSCIENCE AND ACTION 

and rapidly -moving minds sprang to their 
decisions. Their consciences were not 
sensitive only, hut impatient and im- 
perious. The Duke of Devonshire moved, 
not less obediently, to the law of convic- 
tion, but with an extreme and even per- 
plexing deliberation. The mental exercises 
which he underwent between the promul- 
gation of the new fiscal policy in May 1903 
and his resignation in the following October, 
form a most interesting study in the work- 
ings of the political conscience. That the 
eventual result of those exercises irritated 
Mr. Balfour into undignified ill -temper was 
not surprising. Men who are mentally 
alert are impatient of long deliberations, 
and not least when those deliberations issue 
in action hostile to themselves. 

What, then, is the conclusion of the 
whole matter ? We grant that conscience 
is the supreme guide in political per- 
plexities, but, if our neighbour's decision 
differs, however widely, from our own, we 
are bound to remember that no two 
consciences act exactly alike. 

291 



IV 
MISCELLANEA 



I 

DESTINY 

" Sir Gawain said, Methinketh this shall 
betide ; but God may well fordo Destiny." 
This Arthurian quotation supplies me with 
the word I need, for I had found it difficult 
to choose a heading for this chapter. If I 
had called it, more amply, Predestination, I 
should at once have run on the *' rocky 
dangers " of controversial theology. If I 
had called it Determinism, I should have 
frightened away every one except the Pro- 
fessors and the learned ladies. " Necessity " 
introduces flippant associations, and the 
memory of the Scottish judge. Lord 
Cringletie, concerning whom' a disappointed 
rival at the Bar wrote :— 

Necessity and Cringletie 
They balance to a tittle — 

Necessity knows no law, 
And Cringletie as little. 

295 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

But the wbrd " Destiny " covers wider 
ground. It represents a factor in human 
thought, which is by no means abstract, 
but has had a most practical and definite 
effect on human hfe. Ten thousand are 
the pleas which an uneasy conscience 
invents for shifting its responsibilities on 
to something else than the conscious and 
guilty self ; and nothing is easier than to 
charge one's shortcomings or wrongdoings 
on Destiny. In ages less materialistic than 
our own, the conception of a spiritual 
destiny was made to justify the most 
ghastly crimes. Man was preordained to 
do certain acts ; and, when he did them, 
he was merely obeying an irresistible 
decree, and was in no sense amenable to 
moral censure. Sir Walter Scott, one of 
whose most entrancing gifts was the power 
of weaving thought into narrative, made 
fine use of this sinister belief in the case 
of the intending murdjerer, whose purpose 
was defeated, and who himself was killed. 
As he lies stricken with his mortal wound, 
Dryfesdale murmurs in his agony — 
296 



DESTINY 



strange turns of fate ! I designed what I could not 
do, and he has done what he did not perchance 
design. Wondrous, that our will should ever oppose 
itself to the strong and uncontroulable tide of destiny 
— that we should strive against the stream when we 
might drift with the current. 

And Douglas, as he bends over the dead 
body, says to him' who actually dealt the 
fatal blow :— 

I blame thee not, though I lament the chance. 
There is an overruling destiny above us, though not 
in the sense of that wretched man, who, beguiled by 
some foreign mystagogues, used the awful word as 
the ready apology for whatever he chose to do. 

The " foreign mystagogues " might in- 
deed, had they thought it worth while, 
have justified themselves by high, though 
perverted, authority. A little while ago I 
gave some offence by writing about the 
" Calvinistic travesty of Religion," which 
had upset a young man's faith. A critic 
wrote : " It is scarcely fair to charge upon 
Calvin, or upon his perhaps too zealous 
followers, the sole responsibility for the 
doctrine of Predestination. Unhappily he 
was a too diligent student of St. Augus- 

297 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

tine, and, possibly, a too faithful Paulinist.'^ 
But, whether we lay the blame on Paul, 
or Augustine, or Calvin, the belief in 
Destiny was made to justify hideous 
Crimes ; and its effects in destroying mental 
peace was scarcely less deplorable. I 
suppose that it reached its consummation 
of logical and ordered horror in the 
theology of New England, and in the 
spiritual influence exercised by such men 
as Edwards and Hopkins and Brainerd. 
The mother clasped her babe to her 
bosom, and believed, with an awful shudder- 
ing, that, long before it had a separate 
existence, its ultimate destiny had been 
irrevocably fixed, and that, in the huge 
majority of instances, that destiny was 
doom : — 

In no other time or place of Christendom have so 
fearful issues been presented to the mind. Some 
Church interposed its protecting shield ; the Christian- 
born and baptized child was supposed in some wise 
rescued from the curse of the Fall, and related to 
the great redemption. Augustine silenced the dread 
anxieties of trembling love by prayers offered for the 
dead, in times when the Church above and on earth 
298 



DESTINY 



presented itself to the eye of the mourners as a great 
assembly, with one accord lifting interceding hands 
for the parted soul. But the clear logic and intense 
individualism of New England deepened the problems 
of the Augustinian faith, while they swept away all 
those softening provisions so earnestly clasped to the 
throbbing heart of that great poet of theology. 

It Was the allusion to St. Augustine 
in my critic's letter that induced me to 
venture on this quotation from — what I 
generally detest — a theological novel. The 
Minister's Wooing, by Mrs. Beecher-Stovve, 
herself a New Englander, presents with 
rare force and fidelity the struggle between 
predestinarian theology and human love— 
and love carries the day, in spite of Calvin 
and all his gloomy crew. 

When Calvinism was desolating hearts 
and homes in the New World, it was be- 
ginning to lose its hold on England. It 
was in 1770 that the Methodist Conference 
made its ever -memorable decision, and, in 
spite of the enormous force wielded by 
George Whitefield' and his friends, declared 
for universal redemption. Calvinism drove 
Cowper mad, and so wrecked one of the 

299 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

most beautiful of human spirits. Mindful 
of what my critic said, I will not lay the 
blame on this teacher or on that ; but 
against the theory that God has pre- 
destined some of His creatures to eternal 
misery I will set the Church's faith that 
God has created all His creatures for 
eternal happiness, but has left them a free 
choice to accept or reject the boon. It 
was a theologian ' pre-eminent for Orthodoxy 
who wrote — " Hell may be, after all, only the 
last a-v^ful prerogative of the human will ", ; 
and it was a Cardinal who said to me — > 
" I believe in an eternal Hell, eternally 
empty." 

But all these considerations belong, more 
or less closely, to the realm of theology, 
and, as such, Kvill by some readers be dis- 
missed with proper contempt. Let me turn, 
therefore, to another quarter, not at all 
theological, where the doctrine of Destiny 
has had disastrous effects. In this quarter 
the fetish is called Heredity, and it is 
made to bear all those moral reproaches 

' J. K. lUiiigwoith. 
300 



DESTINY 



which aforetime were heaped on the head 
of Predestination ; and 'Heredity is rein- 
forced by a convenient ally called Environ- 
ment. A perverted spiritualism produced 
reaction, and the reaction took a materialistic 
form. Charles Kingsley was one of the 
earliest of our religious teachers to give 
the body its due place, and the things of 
the body their real importance, in the for- 
mation of human character ; but it was 
his nature to overstate every truth which 
he held. Thus he put the language of 
the reaction into the mouth of Sandy 
MacKaye :— 

Say how ye saw the mouth o' Hell, and the twa 
pillars thereof at the entry — the pawnbroker's shop 
o' one side and the gin-palace at the other — twa 
monstrous deevils, eating up men, and women, and 
bairns, body and soul. Look at that boy gaun out 
o' the pawnshop, where he's been pledging the 
handkerchief he stole the morning, into the ginshop ! 
Look at that girl that went in wi' a shawl on her 
back and cam' out wi'out ane ! Drunkards frae the 
breast ! harlots frae the cradle ! damned before they're 
born ! John Calvin had an inkling o' the truth there, 
I'm a'most driven to think, wi' his Reprobation 
deevils' doctrines ! 

301 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Another prophet of the Reaction was 
Ohver Wendell Holmes, who, in his eager 
revolt against the Calvinism in which he 
had been reared, cast the blame for moral 
aberrations on Heredity— a pre-natal inocu- 
lation with the poison of the rattle-snake— a 
drop of Red Indian blood unwittingly intro- 
duced into the straitest sect of New England 
Puritanism. And so increasingly for fifty 
years the doctrine of iHeredity strengthened 
its hold, until some of our teachers laid it 
down that sin was merely a disease, and 
that we may be exonerated from the guilt 
of the most abominable crimes if only 
we can prove that our great -grandmother 
drank, or that our grandfather, when he 
beat his father, was repeating what the 
victim had himself done sixty years before. 

Of more recent years, science has come 
to the rescue of common sense and morality ; 
and now we are taught the obvious truth 
that each of us has an infinite number 
of ancestors, and that, while they have 
bequeathed to us lan equal number of con- 
tending influences, it is our business to 
302 



DESTINY 



decide 'which of those influences is to pre- 
vail. So conscience and will have once 
again resunned their kingdom, and we have 
learned what our Arthurian forerunners 
meant when they said that "God may 
well fordo Destiny." 



303 



II 

THE SPIRITS IN PRISON 

My title is taken from; one of the most 
mysterious passages in the New Testament ; 
but I am not going to attempt a theo- 
logical discourse nor to perplex my readers 
with doubtful interpretations. I am thinking 
of those who, like ourselves, are 

Confined and pestered in this pin-fold here, 

but, unlike us, find one of the five ways 
of exit barred. The physical senses used 
to be called " The Five Gateways of Know- 
ledge," but it is not less true that they 
are five ways of escape from the cares 
which "confine" and "pester" us. The 
subject is forced upon my thoughts by the 
spectacle, most pathetic, most exalting, 
which just now encounters us every day 
in the parks, in the streets, and in the 
304 



THE SPIRITS IN PRISON 

hospitals— the spectacle of mien who, for 
their country's cause, have sacrificed what 
may Well seem even more precious than 
life itself. 

Mankind has agreed to regard the sense 
of Taste as the humblest of the five gate- 
ways. Honest folks who really enjoy their 
food are ashamied to say so ; and, as people 
undervalue the blessing of taste, so 
naturally they ' do not compassionate its 
loss. Yet I think that Dean Stanley, who 
was born without taste or smell, would 
have been a happier and a healthier man 
if he had been encouraged to eat by the 
incentive of the palate, and not merely 
by the feeling of faintness if the m'eal was 
forgotten. Harriet Martineau was born 
without taste or hearing ; but once, for 
a rapturous moment, the sense of taste 
was vouchsafed to her when she was 
eating a mutton-chop, and she exclaimed, 
in transport : " This is heaven ! " What 
would she have said if she had been 
eating strawberries and cream? 

I mention Taste, only because it is one 
U 305 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

of the Five Gateways. The sense of 
Smell is infinitely more poetic, for the 
mere mention of it recalls " the rich and 
balmy eve," breathing roses and cloves 
and mignonette and heliotrope and syringa ; 
and, even when these glories have departed, 
it reminds us of the wholesome freshness 
of neW-turned earth and new -cut grass, 
and the strange, penetrating aroma of the 
autumn woods. " Golden vials full of 
odours " have their place in the Apocalyptic 
worship, and who is there that does not 
know the power of a long-forgotten scent 
to wake a sleeping memory ? One opens 
a cabinet, or takes the stopper out of a 
smelling-bottle, or unfolds a packet of 
letters long since put away, and forthwith 
the magical whiff of musk or cedar or 
sandalwood carries one back over an inter- 
space of thirty years, and one touches 
again the vanished hand that locked the 
cabinet and docketed the letters. The 
loss of smell would be a very real privation. 
The sense of Feeling is, I suppose, the 
sense which most people value least. -When 
306 



THE SPIRITS IN PRISON 

Walter Pater brought out his Studies in 
the History of tlie Renaissance, he had 
them printed on a curiously ribbed paper, 
because life ought to be a series of 
physically agreeable sensations, and it was 
a pity to lose the gratification of the 
finger-tips. But this, though strictly 
Eesthetic, was rather namby-pamby, and, 
except for utilitarian purposes, most men 
would suffer little from' the loss of feehng. 
The sense of Sight is, I suppose, the 
sense which we generally regard as the 
most precious of all. " Blind Bartimseus " 
is the eternal type of darkened humanity 
striving for the light. We all have had 
repeated occasion to admire the noble 
patience and courage of the blind, and 
our sightless soldiers are exemplifying it 
anew. By their endurance they make their 
souls their own. Blind men and blind 
women, poor, friendless, and bereft, yet 
bear the burden of life with unflagging 
cheerfulness, and cherish an even proud 
independence. Let any one to whom this 
thought appeals visit St. Dunstan's or 

307 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

the Royal College at Norwood, and see 
the m'arvels of activity and intelligence and 
physical courage which are there the com- 
monplaces of daily, experience. Music is 
to the blind m'an the very gate of heaven, 
and through it the imprisoned spirit escapes 
into light and joy. 

There is an irritating commonplace, 
glibly uttered by those who excel in 
finding reasons why other people should 
be patient, and it runs thus : " Oh ! but 
blind people are so cheerful. It is the 
deaf who are so cross and disagreeable." 
There is an element of truth in the saying, 
and the reason of it is surely obvious. 
The time when one is talking to a blind 
friend is the time when he feels his afflic- 
tion least. For the moment he is on 
even terms with those around him, and he 
rejoices in his opportunity. We do not 
see him during the long hours of silence 
and solitude, when he is alone with his 
own thoughts in a darkness which can 
be felt. 1 always remember the pathetic 
tone in which Henry Fawcett — the bravest 
308 



THE SPIRITS IN PRISON 

of blind men— used to say " Good-bye " 
when one left him, though it might be 
only to cross the room'. 

On the other hand, the hour of con- 
versation is the hour when the deaf m'an 
resents his deafness. Every open mouth' 
in the room, every animated face, every 
token of eager or interesting talk, reminds 
him of his loss ; and the vocal clumsiness 
with which people generally address them- 
selves to the deaf aggravates the vexation. 

What music is to the blind, that, I 
hope, books are to the deaf. A man may 
forget his prison -walls when he is visited 
by Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Scott 
and Dickens, and the goodly company which 
they bring in their train. 

It constantly falls to ray lot to speak 
on behalf of some society or institution 
devoted to the assistance of the " Spirits 
in Prison," and I anticipate some such 
opportunities as the result of the war. 
It is a joyous task, and yet it has its 
difficulties. The " Spirits," like the rest 
of us, have their prejudices and their pre- 

309 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

dilections. They dislike, most rightly, any 
attempt at buffoonery. They dislike not 
less the feeling that they are patronized 
or talked -down -to. They dislike being 
publicly pitied. It is best on such 
occasions to say nothing about the pathetic 
side of things, for that side speaks for 
itself in a gymnastic exhibition by the 
blind, or a cricket -match played by two 
dumb elevens. A word of friendliness, a 
word of encouragement, above all a word 
of fun, is what the imprisoned spirit needs ; 
and thrice happy is he who, whether by 
voice or pen, has the privilege of saying 
it. "The lessons of Hope," said Gladstone, 
" are, upon the whole, the lessons of wisdom ; 
and the labooir of life is cheered by the song 
of life." 



310 



Ill 

EDUCATION 

*' It is tiresome to hear education dis- 
cussed, tiresome to educate, and tiresome 
to be educated." In this emphatic cry 
of Lord Melbourne (reported by Queen 
Victoria) the secret thoughts of mlany 
hearts found utterance. As to the tire- 
someness of hearing education discussed, 
we all are agreed. In The Lighter Side 
of School Life, Ian Hay, himself a school- 
master, has described with admirable fidelity 
the instructive eloquence of the officiant 
on Speech Day, who informs a jaded 
audience that education, etymologically con- 
sidered, signifies the process, not of putting 
in, but of drawing out. Perhaps Lord 
Melbourne, in " his green, unknowing youth," 
had suffered under some such infliction. Her 
Majesty's journal thus 'elaborates the theme :— 

Lord M. made us laugh very much with his opinions 
about Schools and Public Education ; the latter he 

311 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



don't like, and when I asked him if he did, he said. 
" I daren't say in these times I'm against it, but I am 
against it." He says it may do pretty well in Germany, 
but that the English would not submit to that thral- 
dom ; he thinks it had much better be left to Voluntary 
Education, and that people of very great genius were 
educated by circumstances, and that " the education 
of circumstances " was the best ; what is taught in 
schools might be improved, he thinks. 



These words were written in 1839, ^^^ 
it is worthy of note that Melbourne, a 
good Whig and a friend to civil liberty, 
already detected the tendency to over- 
governm'ent which has made Germany what 
she is ; and, though thirty years later 
England submitted to the " thraldom " of 
national and compulsory education, some of 
our present advisers are apparently anxious 
to throw it off, or at least to mitigate 
its rigours. The State has got to econo- 
mize — let it begin, say these publicists, in 
the school. The pitifullest and meanest 
outcry which can be uttered is the outcry 
of the well-to-do classes against expendi- 
ture on the instruction of the poor. To 
put the issue in the vulgarest form, com- 
312 



EDUCATION 



pare what, as a nation, we spend on drink 
with what we spend on education, and 
you will have good reason to be ashamed 
of our national housekeeping. Close on 
eighty years ago Sydney Smith, preaching 
in St. Paul's Cathedral pn the duty of 
public education, said : " When I see the 
village school, and the tattered scholars, 
and the aged master or mistress teaching 
the mechanical art of reading or writing, 
and thinking that they are teaching that 
alone, I feel that the aged instructor is 
protecting life, insuring property, fencing 
the altar, guarding the throne, giving space 
and liberty to all the fine powers of man, 
and lifting him up to his own place in 
the order of creation." 

Those are not bad words for a dignitary 
of the Established Churt:h in the year 
1837, and Churchmen may take a reason- 
able pride in the fact that, in the mlatter 
of public education, as in so many other 
spheres of secular beneficence, the Church 
has preceded and led the State. In the 
darkest days of social exclusiveness the 

313 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Church was the nursing-mother of the poor 
scholar, and provided of her own free- 
will that career for talent which is now 
secured by law. Bishop Butler, preaching 
in 1745 o^"^ behalf of the Charity Schools 
of London and Westminster, anticipated, 
and rebutted by anticipation, the views of 
those who a hundred and seventy years 
later should selfishly oppose the demands 
of popular education. He speaks of the 
successive changes in the world, and shows 
how they make certain knowledge neces- 
sary which was not so formerly ; he urges 
the hardship of exclusion from such know- 
ledge ; and he ridicules with characteristic 
satire the absurdity and selfishness of 
those who are " so extremely apprehensive 
of the danger that poor persons will make 
a perverse use of even the least advantage, 
whilst they do not appear at all apprehen- 
sive of the like danger for themselves or 
their own children, in respect of riches 
or power, how much soever ; though the 
danger of perverting these advantages 
is surely as great, and the perversion 
314 



EDUCATION 



itself of much greater and worse con- 
sequence." 

The sam'e great man in the same great 
sermon says, with equal insight : " Of educa- 
tion, inform'ation itself is really the least 
part." Most certainly it is, and yet, the 
conditions of life for poor boys and girls 
being what they are, information is a Very 
necessary part. The struggle for existence, 
the pressure of competition, the rivalry of 
foreigtn nations, makes it imperatively neces- 
sary that, during the few years that these 
children are in our hands, we should supply 
them' with such an outfit in the way of 
hard knowledge and definite accomplish- 
ment as will save them from being crushed 
to death in the struggle for self-support. 

This much must be secured; and, con- 
currently with it, there must be the moral 
education which is supplied by order, 
discipline, and cleanliness ; the sense of 
membership of a body ; the encourage- 
ment of honest pa-ide in good work ; some 
provision for the aesthetic sense ; some 
attempt to make good the inevitable short- 
comings of the perhaps squalid home. 

315 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

If this be so, it means, of course, warm, 
healthy, and convenient school -rooms ; it 
means something at least in the way of 
artistic decoration ; it means the cultiva- 
tion of music ; and, above all, it m^ans a 
well-paid staff of teachers. No form of 
public m-eanness can be more suicidal than 
that of " sweating " the men and the women 
who are training the next generation of 
English citizens. Physical exercises, such 
as drill and swimmingr— the training of the 
body as well as the intellect — should form 
a part of any system of national education. 
And this leads me to a further point — 
Can all this work of body and mind be 
done on an empty stomach, or, at the 
best, a half -nourished frame ? 

One free mieal a day in every elementary 
school is, as I conceive, positively due to 
ill -fed children whom we compel to learn ; 
and, if any one is found to grumble at 
the cost, let him' ask a teacher of a 
County Council school to describe the 
scraps of food on which, even in the 
depth of winter, so many of the children 
316 



EDUCATION 



subsist ; let himi compare them with the 
succession of meals which he deems essen- 
tial for his own family — and then pray 
God to take away the heart of stone and 
give him a heart of flesh. 

Information, then, as Bishop Butler said, 
is the least part of education. The greatest, 
I suppose, is the development of the child's 
natural power to its utmost extent and 
capacity ; and the duty of so developing 
it must, I think, be admitted by every one 
who ponders the Divine teaching about 
the buried talent, and the pound laid up 
in a napkin. Unless we enable and en- 
courage every boy in England to bring 
whatever physical and miental gifts he has 
to the highest point of their possible per- 
fection, we are shamefully and culpably 
squandering the treasure which God has 
given to England to be traded with and 
accounted for. And we have no one but 
ourselves to blamie if, as a Nenlesis on our 
neglect, we lose our present standing among 
the educated nations of the wbrld. 



317 



IV 

A DISREGARDED PROPHET 

Once, in those happier days when men's 
minds were not wholly occupied with blood- 
shed, Lord Haldane was discoursing on 
Education. " I wish," he exclaimed, " we 
had Matthew Arnold again among us to 
be our prophet." Arnold preached, all 
his life long, the doctrine that a State 
is responsible for the proper education of 
its children ; and this doctrine fell upon 
deaf ears. His first point was that at 
the apex of the pyramid there must be 
a Minister of Education. " Merely for 
administrative convenience such a Minister 
is, indeed, indispensable. But it is even 
more important to have a centre in which 
to fix responsibility." In Arnold's time 
the Lord President of the Council was 
theoretically President of the Committee 
318 



A DISREGARDED PROPHET 

of Council on Education ; but the work — 
so far as it was done at all — was done 
by the Vice-President of the Committee ; 
so authority was dissociated from responsi- 
bility, with the most injurious results. 
•When Arnold had retired from his inspec- 
torship he said to a gathering of teachers : — 

I know the Duke of Richmond told the House of 
Lords that, as Lord President, he was Minister of 
Education — (laughter) — but really the Duke's sense 
of humour must have been slumbering when he told 
the House of Lords that a man is not Minister of 
Education by taking the name, but by doing the 
functions. (Cheers.) To do the functions he must 
put his mind to the subject of education ; and, so 
long as Lord Presidents are what they are, and 
education is what it is, a Lord President will not be 
a man who puts his mind to the subject of education. 
A Vice-President is not, on the Lord President's own 
showing, and cannot be, Minister for Education. He 
cannot be made responsible for faults and neglects. 
Now, what we want in a Minister of Education is this 
— a centre where we can fix the responsibility.^ 

This great and responsible officer must, 
in Arnold's view, be a Cabinet Minister, 

' Arnold's aspiration has now (191 7) been realized 
by the appointment of Mr. H. A. L. Fisher to the 
Presidency of the Board of Education. 

319 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

and was to preside over the whole educa- 
tion of the country. The Universities, 
the Public Schools, and the Elementary 
Schools were all to be subject to his 
sway. The Minister was to be assisted by 
a Council of Education, " comprising, with- 
out regard to politics, the persons most proper 
to be heard on questions of public educa- 
tion." This Council was to be consultative, 
and the Minister was to take its opinions 
on all-important measures, but the respon- 
sibility for the decision was to be his 
alone. All such anomalous institutions as 
King's College were to be co-ordinated 
to the existing Universities ; and the Uni- 
versities were to establish " Eaculties " in 
great centres of population, supply pro- 
fessors and lecturers, aiid then examine 
and confer degrees. Then the country 
should be niapped out into eight or 
ten districts, and each of those districts 
should have a Provincial School-board, 
which should " represent the State in the 
country," keep the Minister informed of 
local requirements, and act as the organ 
320 



A DISREGARDED PROPHET 

of communication between him and the 
schools in its jurisdiction. All schools, 
from Eton downwards, were to be 
subject to this provincial jurisdiction, with 
the Minister as the final authority. The 
whole face of the country is, studded with 
small grammar-schools or foundation-schools, 
having endowments, greater or smaller, and 
a permanent and corporate life. These 
schools, enlarged and reformed, were, accord- 
ing to Arnold's scheme, to be the ordinary 
training-places of the middle class. Where 
they did not exist, similar schools were 
to be created by the State and dubbed 
"Royal" or "Public" Schools. Arnold 
contended that ancient schools so revived 
and modern schools so constituted, would 
have a dignity and a status such as no 
school of private venture could attain. 

Even more important were Arnold's sug- 
gestions about the elementary schools : — 

The moment the working class of this country have 
the question of compulsory education brought home 
to them, their self-respect will make them demand, 
like the working classes of the Continent, Public 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



Schools lor their children, and not schools which the 
clergyman or the squire or the mill-owner can call 
my school. 

That word which he italicized — Public — 
is the key to Arnold's whole system. 
From top to bottom the education of the 
country was^ to be Public. The Univer- 
sities were to> be made " public " in the 
sense that they were to be supervised and 
regulated by the State. The Public Schools, 
traditionally so called, were to be made 
really public by being brought under the 
Minister and the School-boards. The 
lesser Foundation Schools were to be made 
public by a redistribution of their revenues ; 
and the new schools, public by virtue of 
their creation, were to be established 
alongside of the older foundations. 

This, in broad outline, was Arnold's 

scheme ; but he saw very clearly the 

" capital difficulty " of carrying it into 

effect : — 

The Public School for the people must rest upon 
the niunici])al organization of the country. . . . But 
the country districts, with us, have at present only the 
feudal and ecclesiastical organization of the Middle Ages. 
322 



A DISREGARDED PROPHET 



Of recent years people have come to 
regard education as far more a matter 
of public concern, and far less a matter 
of private venture, than in Mid -Victorian 
days. We have gradually come to see 
that the State and the municipality, in 
their respective areas, have something to 
say on the matter. 

Agam, the institutions of local government 
have developed themselves on the lines 
desiderated by Arnold in 1868. The sub- 
ordination of education to County Councils 
was, m the eyes of many, a risky experiment ; 
but it was exactly the experiment which 
he wished to see. The resuscitation of 
the Edwardian and Elizabethan grammar- 
schools all over the country has brought 
the notion of the Public School to the 
very door of the middle class; and the 
provision of intermediate schools by local 
authorities has shaken the strongholds of 
such as Mr. Creakle. 

The Parliament of 1868-74— the first 
elected by a democratic suffrage— was intent 
on reform in every direction ; and the 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

cherished right of a father to starve his 
child's mind was strenuously challenged. 
At this juncture Arnold repeatedly reminded 
his countrymen, then unaccustomed to the 
working of compulsory education, that it 
would be intolerably unjust and absurd if 
it were applied only to the children of the 
poor. He contended that the upper and 
middle classes were every whit as much 
in need of an obligatory system, if their 
children were to be properly educated, 
as the working classes for whom it was 
proposed to legislate : — 

The principle is just as good for one class as 
another, and it is only by applying it impartially that 
you can save its application from being insolent and 
invidious. 

This theme is elaborated, with exuberant 
wit and fancy, in Friendship's Garland — 
a delightful book which all who concern 
themselves with National Education would do 
well to ponder. 



324 



V 

GHOSTS 

A FRIEND sends me the subjoined cutting ; 
thinks it " Christmassy " ; and is sure that 
I have some Family Ghost -stories which 
would interest the International Club : — 

It was the Christmas gathering of the International 
Club for Psychical Research. The members, who 
are well known in Society and the professions, 
gathered round the bright little tea-tables and the 
blazing fires in a room overlooking Piccadilly and told 
ghost stories — stories of extraordinary happenings, of 
weird hauntings, and of things strange and most 
unaccountable. 

Alas ! I have no contribution to make. I 
cannot claim a place at that symposium. 
I am ghost -proof, and was reared in a 
ghost -proof hom'e. My forefathers helped 
to plunder the Church under Henry VIII, 
and had their share in the Sack of Rome. 
Under Edward VT they suppressed a 

325 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

rebellion in Devonshire. During Mary's 
agitating reign they contrived to keep their 
heads on their shoulders and their money 
in their pockets ; and then, acting under 
Elizabeth's commission, they restored order 
in Ireland by methods strenuous even for 
that age. Generally speaking, they bore 
their part in all the turbulent proceedings, 
at home and abroad, which made English 
History in the sixteenth century. It can 
scarcely be doubted that a family which 
behaved so actively at a period when 
human life was little accounted of, must 
have, sooner or later, done something 
which deserved a Ghost. Certainly they 
made a good many people ghosts before 
their time ; and yet, as far as I know, 
we have been wholly free from' super- 
natural visitations. Perhaps three hundred 
years of ordinary citizenship have obli- 
terated the traces of tumultuous wrong- 
doing ; perhaps the fact that one of 
ourselves was forcibly disembodied has 
redressed the balance and wiped off the 
score. Anyhow, the fact remains that, 
326 



GHOSTS 

as far as I am personally concerned, I 
have neither Family Ghosts nor Family 
Superstitions. 

My friends have plenty ; and yet, perhaps 
because I myself am ghost -proof, I have only 
very dim and confused notions of other 
people's ghosts. Vaguely I seem to remem- 
ber that in every country house of any 
pretensions, from: Hampton Court downwards, 
mysterious footsteps are heard, and doors 
open of their own accord, and people 
walk up and down stairs with their heads 
under their arms. Sir Frank Burnand 
got exactly the right " atmosphere " when 
he described the Haunted Chamber at 
Bovor Castle. " Childers wants tact. He 
hopes I shall sleep comfortably, and laugh- 
ingly trusts I won't see any ghosts. I 
reply, Fll tell him all about the ghosts 
in the morning. I remember (just as 
he says good-night) a story of this sort 
in Washington Irving, I think, where a 
man jested about telling them in the morn- 
ing about a ghost, and was haunted. I 
think his hair turned white, and he saw 

327 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

a picture roll its eyes, and the top of the 
bed came down. I forget exactly; but 
it's not the sort of thing to remember 
just as you are going to bed in the ' Haunted 
Chamber ' of a strange house." 

" Bovor Castle "^or at least the house 
from which it is drawn with curious fidelity 
— is in the cheerful county of Kent ; but, 
as we move northward, ghosts become 
more insistent, and, when once we cross 
the Border, we are in their peculiar 
dominion. I suppose that as long as 
people talk about the Weird and the 
Uncanny, they will tell, with variants, the 

tale of G Castle ; and at least one 

person in each company will know exactly 
where the Secret Room is, and what it 
contains, and what became of the rash 
lady who hung towels out of all the 
windows she could find, so as to localize, 
negatively, the room whicJi hadiVt a window. 

And, when they have exhausted G 

Castle, they will turn to W , and will 

affirm that they met " Green Jean " in 

the passage and were surprised not to 
328 



GHOSTS 

find her at dinner ; or to A , where, on 

Hallow E'en^ the murdered Countess still 
points reproachflilly to her bleeding breast. 

I once asked a lady, who, in her earlier 
life, had lived in the very heart of society, 
ind who returned to it after a long absence, 
what was the change which struck her most 
'orcibly. She promptly replied : " The 
growth of superstition. I hear my friends 
ieriously discussing ghosts. In my day 
Deople who talked in that way would 
lave been put in Bedlam ; their relations 
vould have required no other proof that 
hey were mad." My own experience con- 
irms this testimony. People who used 
o tell ghost-stories told them either to 
ill gaps when reasonable conversation failed, 
)r for the fun of hi'aking credulous hearers 
tare and gasp. Bishop Wilberforce in- 
dented a splendid story about a priest and 
L sliding panel and a concealed confes- 
ion ; and I believe that he habitually 
ised it as a foolometer, to test the 
nental capacity of new acquaintances. 

" Superstition and infidelity usually go 

329 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

together. Professed atheists have trafficked 
in augury, and men who will not believe 
in God will believe in ghosts." But of 
late years ghosts have gone out of fashion, 
and Spooks (a word fashioned, I believe, 
by Mr. Andrew Lang out of Greek mate- 
rials) have taken their place. People stuffed 
with luncheon and coffee and Kiimmel and 
cigarettes will sit in an admiring circle 
round some absurd impostor, male or female, 
who dilates on " that rap, which none 
who have heard it can ever forget," and 
narrates imbecile conversation with departed 
friends whom' one had credited with better 
sense. Closely connected with " Spook- 
ery," is Clairvoyance; Mrs. Endor throws 
herself into a trance, announces what she 
knows will be acceptable, pockets her 
cheque, and sets oft on her return journey 
to America or Australia. 

But Clairv^oyance is a little old-fashioned. 
Crystal-gazing is more modish, and as easy 
as lying. You gather open-mouthed round 
a glass ball, and the gifted gazer reports 
that which he or she can see, but which 
330 



GHOSTS 

s invisible to the grosser eyes. There 
ire no bounds to the fascinating range 
)f a crystal -gazer's fancy, nor to the awe- 
itruck credulity of his dupes. But crystal 
s not the only m'edium through which 
I purged eye can discern the mysterious 
uture. Coffee-grounds, though less ro- 
nantic, are very serviceable. Our hostess 
s an expert in this fonn of science, and, 
)eing a thoroughly amiable woman, she 
nakes the coffee say pretty much what we 
vould like to hear — " Dear Mr. Taper, 
his is delightful. You will be Prime 
Minister before you die. Hope on, hope 
2ver, and trust your star." " Oh, Mr. 
Stylo, I have such good news for you. 
^our next book will be an immense success, 
ind, after that, Messrs. Skin and Flint 
ivill be more liberal, and you will make 
quite a fortune." Closely akin to the 
science of coffee-grounds is that of Palmistry. 
A. wretched gipsy who " tells fortunes " 
at a race-meeting is sent to prison ; but 
when the Vi-car of St. Berengaria's gets 
up a bazaar for a military hospital, a 

331 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



bejewelled lady sits in a secret chamber 
(for admission to which an extra half- 
crown is charged), and, after scrutinizing 
your line of life, tells you that you have 
had influenza, and, projecting her soul into 
futurity, says that the next time you have 
it you will get pneumonia unless you are 
very careful. 

Of these absurdities one can afford to 
speak lightly ; but graver reprehension is 
required for certain malpractices which 
are grouped together under the name of 
" Occultism." I have known a most pro- 
mising boy whose health was destroyed 
and his career ruined by a hypnotic experi- 
ment practised on him without his parents' 
knowledge. I have known a hypnotic clergy- 
man who cozened the women of his con- 
gregation out of money, character, and, in 
some cases, reason. Where Occultism is 
pursued, veracity and self-respect disappear, 
and all that is evil finds congenial 
lodgment. Whoso is wise will ponder 
these things, and will give occultists, male 
and female, an uncommonly wide berth. 
332 



\ 



GHOSTS 

But, in pursuing, I seem to have travelled 
a long way from my starting-point. To 
it I now return, under the guidance of 
Charles Kingsley, who, when questioned 
about his Family Ghost—" Button-cap " 
yclept— wrote thus to his enquirer :— 

Of Button-cap— I knew him well. He used to walk 
across the room in (lopping slippers, and turn over the 
leaves of books to find the missing deed, whereof 
he had defrauded the orphan and the widow. Nobody 
ever saw him ; but, in spite of that, he wore a Howered 
dressing-gown, and a cap with a button on it. Some- 
times he turned cross, and played Poltergeist, as the 
Germans say, roUuig the barrels in the cellar with 
surprising noise, which was undignified. So he was 
always ashamed of himself, and put them all back 
in their places before morning. I believe he is gone 

now. . . . 

Perhaps some one had been laying phosphoric paste 
about, and he ate thereof, and ran down to the pond, 
and drank till he burst. He was Rats. 

The last word in this instructive passage 
has acquired a new sense since Kingsley 
wrote, and it is a sense which exactly suits 
the matter in hand. Whenever I listen to 
tales of the Occult, the exclamation which 
rises instinctively to my lips is—" RATS ! " 

333 



VI 

WHY THURSDAY P 

" A MEATLESS Thursday " has a curiously 
perverse sound. In a novel by a highly 
accomplished lady there is a moving 
dialogue between the heroine and the hero 
at a water-party — " ' Sit in the bows,' she 
said, pointing to the stern." Why? and 
the same question rises to my lips when 
I see the Bishop of London combining 
with journalists, doctors, and dissenting 
ministers to enjoin a "meatless Thursday." 
A meatless Friday is prescribed by the 
Church of which the Bishop is a chief 
pastor, and is doubtless observed in all 
episcopal palaces. It is also prescribed 
by the Church of Rome, and it was 
observed, until a time well within my own 
recollection, by the stricter followers of 
John Wesley . 
334 



WHY THURSDAY? 



The Church of England anticipated, by 
about three hundred years, the salutary 
efforts of Dr. Saleeby and Mr. St. Loe 
Strachey. The Church enumerates as 
" days of fasting or abstinence " (which 
certainly excludes meat) all the Fridays 
in the year, unless Christmas Day falls 
on one of them; the 40 days of Lent, 
16 vigils of Holy Days, 12 Ember Days, 
and 3 Rogation Days— altogether (making 
allowance for the possibility that some may 
overlap) at least 120 days out of the 
365. It is true that very few, in our 
degenerate age, can face the 40 days of 
Lenten abstinence, but every one can 
manage a meatless Friday, and thereby 
can improve his health, save his money, 
and illustrate his churchmanship . But I 
am a zealous champion of the rights of 
conscience, and would not for the world 
impose the Church's rule on my fellow- 
citizens who are not Churchmen. My Non- 
conformist brother can enjoy a meatless 
Thursday; the atheist,, the agnostic, and 
the nothingarian, can choose a Monday, 

335 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

or a Tuesday, or a Wednesday ; and my 
Jewish friends would probably prefer 
Saturday, thereby training themlselves for 
the far greater feat of endurance which 
they practise between sunset and sunset 
on the Day of Atonement. 

To establish one meatless day in seven 
would be, without reference to any theo- 
logical predilections, a social reform of 
great value. The war has taught us that 
many things. Conscription among the 
number, which we deemed impossible are 
possible, and, we hope, salutary. If the 
war also teaches us that we all eat too 
much meat, and can be not only as well 
but much better without it, we shall all 
be the gainers. " lis mangent comme les 
ogres ! " was the comment of a French 
maid on the eating habits of an English 
family ; and a glance at a common cookery- 
book or bill of fare will justify her ver- 
dict. Harold Skimpolc was wise before 
his time when he contrasted his own 
habits with those of his carnivorous 
contemporaries :— - 
336 



WHY THURSDAY? 



Some men want legs of beef and mutton for 
breakfast ; I don't. Give me my peach, my cup of 
coffee, and my claret ; I am content. I don't want 
them for themselves ; but they remind me of the sun. 
There's nothing solar about legs of beef and mutton ; 
mere animal satisfaction. 

Legs of beef and imutton for breakfast 
must have been a gastronomical excess even 
in the days when Mr. Skimpole flourished ; 
but legs of' beef and mutton for dinner, 
following one another in hideous alterna- 
tion all the year round, have maintained 
their monotonous ascendency even to the 
present day. The first man who had the 
courage to challenge this national abuse 
was Sir Henry Thompson (i 820-1 904), 
whose long practice as a surgeon convinced 
him that a large proportion of human disease 
was directly traceable to excess of meat- 
eating. Early in the 'eighties he published 
his excellent treatise on f^ood and Feeding, 
and showed at once a wholesomer, a 
cheaper, and a more agreeable, system of 
aliment than had previously obtained in 
England. Though he was separated by 
the distance of the poles from' the eccle- 
Y 337 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

siastical standpoint, he enjoined a diet which' 
would come near to making every day in 
the year a Jour maigre. He claimed for 
fish and eggs and vegetables and cheese 
their rightful place in domestic economy ; 
and, when I add that he also prescribed 
water -drinking, I secure for him the 
respectful attention of another band of 
dietetic reformers . 

The reform' which Thompson taught has 
made its Avay slowly but surely. The 
consumption of animal food in the ordinary 
diet of the well-to-do has visibly declined, 
but might be reduced much further with 
the best results. Of course, all tides are 
liable to refluences, and all reforms to 
reaction ; and there was a lamentable 
recrudescence of meat -eating when " The 
Salisbury Cure " came into vogue. I have 
no notion why it was called " Salisbury " 
—certainly not with reference to the illus- 
trious statesman so named. It consisted 
of minced beef, as nearly as possible raw, 
with jorums of hot water between meals. 
The tendency of all fanaticism' is to cause 
338 



WHY THURSDAY? 



a rebound ; and the victimis of this dis- 
gusting cure as soon as they recovered 
betook themselves, with all convenient 
speed, to "The Haig Cure." This cure 
was cheese. A mountain of Stilton or 
Cheddar crowned the festive board, and 
the chinks, external and internal, were filled 
up with nuts. It is true of man generally, 
and of the food -faddist in particular, that 
he never continueth long in one stay ; 
and the lively oracles of Salisbury and 
Haig were soon superseded by those of 
Metchnikoff. Constitutions which had sur- 
vived red beef and hot water, cheese and 
nuts, succumbed to sour milk, which, by 
its very loathsomeness, gradually recalled 
people to dietetic sanity ; but not for long. 
Now the enthusiasts are all agog for the 
" Fruitarian Cure," which has, at least in 
the summer, an alluring sound. We have 
sometimes shuddered at the rigidity of the 
monastic establishment described in The 
Ingoldsby Legends : — 

Where a full choir of monks and a full choir of nuns 
Lived on nothing but cabbage and hot-cross buns. 

339 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

But the rigidity of the " Fruitarian Cure " 
is much more alarming. It sanctions the 
cabbage, but forbids the buns. It teaches 
that all cooking is a mistake, that the h 
disciple must live on raw vegetables, and I 
that even bread and tea, being cooked, are 
poisonous. -When these dismal truths are 
once grasped, one feels sure that a revolt 
will ensue and that common sense will 
resume its reign . 

In all reforms, religious, social, political, 
economic, the extremist is the pioneer ; but 
wisdom consists in following him only half, 
or at the most three-quarters, of the way. 
By all means let us go in for the one 
meatless day in seven, and, if we can make 
it two, so much the better. In health and 
in patriotism, as well as in things spiritual, 
the Church is a trustworthy guide. 



340 



VII 

IN HONOUR BOUND 

Edged with red, white, and bhie bands. Lord 
Devonport's pledge card was issued yesterday to 
householders for exhibition in their windows. On a 
white background it bears the inscription, in red and 
blue lettering: "In honour bound we adopt the 
national scale of voluntary rations." Copies may be 
had free on application to the Publicity Bureau, 
Ministry of Food, Grosvenor House, W. i. 

I COPY the foregoing extract from a daily 
paper, because I wish to know what is 
implied by the first three words of the 
pledge-card. No man can be " in honour 
bound " except by his own engagement. 
No one on earth— not the King, not the 
Pope, not the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
not the Prime Minister, not even Lord 
Devonport — can put another person " on his 
honour." I repudiate the " red, white, and 
blue bands " of the Rubhcity Bureau, and 

341 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



cast away its cords from me. I can pledge 
my own honour, but no one on earth can 
pledge it for me. 

To maintain the opposite of this propo- 
sition would land society in preposterous 
difficulties. If one man had the power 
to put another " on his honour," life, 
property, and character would all be 
jeopardized. That pleasant rogue, Raffles, 
contemplating a burglary, could say to his 
bosom friend : "I mean to try my luck 
at No. I, Stucco Gardens, to-night, but 
I put you on your honour not to tell the 
police." That eminent sporting and poison- 
ing character. Dr. Palmer, of Rugeley, could 
have said to a confederate : " I put you 
on your honour not to mention it, but I 
mean to give our friend Cooke a dose 
which he won't recover from'." Thackeray's 
" dear young literary friend, Tom Garbage," 
might say to another young lion of Fleet 
Street : " I'm going to write something 
libellous about Lady Lilywhite, of course 
anonymously ; but mind, you are on your 
honour not to give me away." The claim 
342 



IN HONOUR BOUND 

of A. to put B. on his honour, if allowed 
by society, would make B, a partaker of 
all A.'s misdoings, and might force him, 
all against his will, to compound a felony. 
Of course, if Raffles or Palmer or Garbage 
said to his friend : " Will you promise not 
to divulge what I am' going to tell you?" 
and the friend was fool enough to say 
" Yes," his honour would be pledged ; but 
by his own act. 

Putting aside the extreme though illus- 
trative instance of crime, only think of 
the disastrous use which the " Unco' guid," 
the Faddists, and the Fanatics, would make 
of the power to^ put other people on their 
honour. Archbishop Temple or Sir Wilfrid 
Lawson might have put us on our honour 
to abstain from alcohol; the Food Re- 
formers might put us on our honour to 
eat nothing but water -cress and arrow- 
root ; the Anti -Tobacco League might 
put us on our honour to eschew cigarettes ; 
and the Dress Reformers on our honour 
to wear vegetarian boots. 

But, it may be said : " In these cases 

343 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



there would be no executive authority behind 
the Faddist who is meddhng with your 
honour ; whereas Lord Devonport, if you 
disregard his decrees, can enforce them by 
cutting off the supphes." But this docs 
not mend matters—it makes them worse, 
because it introduces the element of bully- 
ing. If Lord Devonport thinks that we 
ought to eat only a certain amount, by all 
means let him enforce that amount— if he 
can. If he thinks he cannot enforce it, 
let him say : "I appeal to your patriotism 
and good sense to economize in food as 
much as you can " — and every good citizen 
will at once respond . But if he says : 
" I put you on your honour only to eat 
as much as I allow," every one who values 
the few shreds of independence still left 
to us will reply : " Here you are travelling 
beyond your powers. My honour is my 
own affair. If I promise to abstain from 
food, then I am ' in honour bound ' ; but the 
fact that you have told me to abstain, and 
threaten compulsion if I disobey, neither 
binds my honour nor touches my conscience." 
344 



IN HONOUR BOUND 



I remember an incident of my Harrow 
days which illustrates Lord Devonport's 
method. The master under whom I began 
had a laudable wish to make us learn 
some English poetry, in addition to the 
Virgil with which we were daily crammed, 
so he proposed a voluntary repetition of 
Milton, for which he promised high marks. 
But we were young and thoughtless, and 
Paradise Lost seemed no paradise — rather a 
purgatory. Whereupon the master said : " If 
you do not act on my suggestion about the 
Voluntary Repetition, I shall be obliged to 
make it compulsory." This method of 
contingent, or conditional, coercion, was 
ludicrous enough ; but the master did not 
enhance the absurdity by saying : "I put 
you on your honour to learn Raphael's 
speech by heart, and if you don't, I shall 
punish you." Young as we were, I think 
that some of us would have replied : " Wait 
till we've promised, sir, and then punish us 
if we break our word." I have made no 
promise to Lord Devonport, and therefore 
I cannot break it. I have not pledged 

345 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

my honour to him, and he cannot pledge 
it for me. Not all the Red, White, and 
Blue Bands in the " Publicity Bureau "— 
not all the red tape and blue pencils in 
Grosvenor House — can make me " in honour 
bound " to do what I have not promised 
to do. 

I heard the other day a curious 
demurrer to my doctrine that no man 
can bind another's honour — " \Mien you 
consult a priest, or a doctor, or a banker, 
he is bound in honour not to divulge 
what you tell him." Most true ; but I 
do not bind him; he binds himself. A 
man who enters the priesthood binds him- 
self in honour, and by the Common Law 
of Christendom', to keep what he hears 
in Confession as secret as the grave ; and 
the same effective though unspoken pledge 
is given in substance by every man who 
becomes a doctor or a banker. In each 
case the man pledges his own honour by 
the very act of entering his profession. 

I have made this protest against what 
I think a monstrous assumption, but in 
346 



IN HONOUR BOUND 



making it I am not actuated by any dis- 
respect for Lord Devonport (whose public 
spirit I sincerely admire), or by any dis- 
sent from the system of diet which he 
is trying to establish. Quite apart from 
all considerations arising out of the war, 
he will be rendering a Valuable service 
to the national health if he persuades 
Englishmen that what Harold Skimpole 
called " legs of sheep and oxen " are not 
the appointed food of man. Only, if he 
is going to cut off our meat, he must 
induce his colleague, Mr. Prothero, to give 
us some potatoes. tf that eminent agri- 
culturist says that there are none to be 
got, let him turn his attention to a certain 
district of Bedfordshire, over which, as 
agent to the Duke of Bedford, he has 
long exercised a benevolent despotism. It 
is almost a pity that he cannot stand 
again for that division. " Prothero and 
Potatoes " would be an exhilarating cry. 



347 



VllI 
HA TFIELD 

Hatfield House is indeed one of " The 
Stately Homes of England." It combines 
all the elements of grandeur— scale and 
position, architectural beauty, historical 
interest, and a very real influence over 
a considerable town and a large district 
of an important county. In the winter 
of 1835 this sacred ark of territorial 
ascendency was nearly destroyed by fire. 
One wing perished, the Dowager Lady 
Salisbury (affectionately called "Old 
Sarum") being burnt to death in it. 
The rest was saved by the exertions of 
family, household, friends, and neighbours, 
among whom one of the most active was 
a young Mr. Talbot, a cousin of Lord 
Salisbury. When the fire was extinguished 
the thankful owner called young Talbot to 
348 



HATFIELD 



him and said : " You have worked right 
well, and have helped to save a great 
disaster. I will show tuy gratitude in a 
practical way. If you will take Holy 
Orders I \vill make you Rector of Hat- 
field, which is worth £1,500 a year, with" 
a capital house." The offer was accepted; 
Mr. Talbot was ordained, and retained the 
rectory of Hatfield till he died, at a good 
old age, in 1888. He was succeeded by 
Lord William Cecil. Lord William now ' 
becomes Bishop of Exeter, and the right 
of presenting to Hatfield lapses to the 
Prime Minister. Here, indeed, is an 
instructive object-lesson. 

In the first place, we see the principle 
on which private patronage in the Estab- 
hshed Church is administered. (Let me say 
in passing that Lord William' Cecil was, 
apart from' all considerations of consan- 
guinity, an exemplary Parish Priest.) In 
the second, we see the anomalousness of 
the system on which episcopal appointments 
are made. Mr. Asquith, who nominated 

^ November 1916. 

349 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Lord William to the See of Exeter, is, 
I believe, a Nonconformist unattached, 
though the Moravians had a share in his 
upbringing. For ten years it was his 
official duty to choose the men who, 
within the precincts of the Established 
Church, should be made Successors to the 
Apostles. That is anomalous enough; but 
even more quaint is the third phase of 
the transaction. The Rector of Hatfield 
becoming a bishop, the law decrees that 
his successor shall be appointed by the 
Crown, and the Crown, for this purpose, 
is now Mr. Lloyd George. " Dod " throws 
only a very defective light on the religious 
views of M.P.'s, but I think I have heard 
that the Baptists claim' our new Prime 
Minister as their own. Here the object- 
lesson is complete. An undergraduate helps 
to extinguish a fire ; he becomes the 
Rector of an important parish for fifty 
years. He goes the way of all fiesh— 
even clerical flesh, which is proverbially 
enduring — and he is succeeded by the 
patron's son, a curate of twenty-five, who 
350 



HATFIELD 



holds the same benefice for twenty-eight 
years. A barrister-Premier, who is a Dis- 
senter if he is anything, turns this Rector 
into a Bishop ; and the fiery apostle 
of Welsh Disestablishment — the suddenly 
chosen head of a War Cabinet — must 
appoint a pastor for the flock which the 
Bishop resigns. Surely the force of 
anomaly could no farther go. 

I have exhibited this object-lesson in 
some detail, because it illustrates a system 
which is as repugnant to some Church- 
men as it is to all Nonconformists. I 
have for twenty years presided over an 
organization called " The Churchmen's 
Liberation League," and I welcome the 
opportunity of stating the object for which 
we stand, and the methods by which we 
hope— some day— to attain it. 

We stand for the principle of "A Free 
Church in a Free State." We desire to 
liberate the Church of England from the 
control of the State, because we believe :— 

I. That State control enfeebles, and tends to destroy, 
the spiritual life of the Church, by encouraging 

351 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



her to lean on the support of, and accommodate 
her teaching to, the Secular power. 

2. That the Church of England, as a religious society, 

has a right to self-government, free from the 
influence of Crown or Parliament, and subject 
only to the Divine law. 

3. That in a country where there are many forms 

of religion, it is unjust and invidious that one 
should be maintained by the State in a position 
of privilege and pre-eminence. 

4. That the maintenance of an Established Church 

is harmful to the spiritual life of the nation, 
because it tends to foster a false conscience, 
and to make people think that National 
Righteousness consists in the legal Establish- 
ment of the Church rather than in the personal 
religion of individual men and women. 

5. That the subjection of the Church to the State 

is an invasion of the Sovereign Rights of the 
Lord Jesus Christ as King of the Universal 
Church and Master of His own House. 

The Disestablishm'ent of the Church 
would, in our judgmlent, involve the 
following changes : — 

1. The Sovereign would cease to be " Supreme 

Governor of the Church." 

2. The Bishops would no longer sit in the House 

of Lords, but the clergy would no longer be 
disqualified for sitting in the House of 
Commons. 
352 



HATFIELD 



3. The control of the doctrine, discipline, and 

worship of the Church would be withdrawn 
from Parliament. 

4. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council 

would no longer have authority in religious 
matters, and Ecclesiastical Courts would cease 
to possess coercive jurisdiction. 

5. Private and official patronage in the Cure of Souls 

would be abolished. 

6. The Bishops would be no longer nominated by 

the Crown, but elected by the Church. 

So far, I have spoken of Disestablish- 
ment only. But it is not likely that the 
State (as represented by Parliament) would 
consent to Disestablishment unless it were 
accompanied by some measure of Disendow - 
ment. All vested interests, whether of 
clergy or laity, would be fully protected, 
and the Church might reasonably hope to 
retain the use of the cathedrals and parish 
churches and the modern endowments. In 
this matter, however, we could safely trust 
to the sense of justice which is inherent 
in the English people. 

It has been well said that " independence 

from State -aid calls forth energy ; the 

withdrawal from- compromising situations or 

z 353 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 



unmeaning alliance leads to the concentra- 
tion of force and the creation of true union. 
A Church to live must have a clear con- 
science, and, if its position in the State 
is felt to compromise that conscience, then, 
however advantageous such a position may 
be, not only for temporal purposes (though 
these are not necessarily to be despised), 
but also for the advancement of religion 
and morality, there must be no hesitation. 
That Church must make up its mind to 
depart out of Egypt, and to go into the 
wilderness." 

In the strong conviction that " the 
wilderness " is the only way to the 
Promised Land of Freedom, we solicit the 
co-operation of our fellow -Churchmen in 
the endeavour to which we are ourselves 
committed . 



354 



IX 

BISHOPS AND ECONOMY 

The excellent Bishop of London seemis 
unduly oppressed by that £10,000 a year 
of his. He is even painfully anxious to 
rebut the charge of wealth. The other 
day his protest went up from' St. Botolph's 
churchyard — " Referring to his salary of 
£10,000 a year, he, said that the State 
took half of this in rates and taxes, and 
he had to keep up two large houses, with 
the result that after fifteen years he was 
£2,000 poorer than when he started." This 
result would have seemed startling, if it 
had not happened that the Bishop, stung 
by the reproaches of his flock, once pub- 
lished a budget, in which he set forth, 
with much precision, the details of his 
expenditure. On such a system, or want 
of system', as that budget revealed, the 

355 



\ 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

only wonder is that his two thousand pounds 
of poverty is not ten. 

" Bishops hve in high places with high 
people, or with little people who depend 
upon them'. They walk delicately, like 
Agag. They hear only one sort of con- 
versation, and avoid bold, reckless msn, 
as a lady veils herself from rough 
breezes." Let me hasten to say that these 
words were written by a Canon of St. 
Paul's, though not by one of the present 
Chapter. To be sure his day was not 
yesterday ; but the testimony remains true, 
and " bold, reckless men," who talk of 
abuses and reforms, seldom have the oppor- 
tunity of breathing their thoughts into 
episcopal ears. They can only study that 
wonderful paper on Church Difficulties which 
the Bishop of London wrote when he was 
Bishop of Stepney^ and shed tears of 
respectful sympathy over the touching tale 
of harsh exaction patiently endured which 
" A Diocesan Bishop " contributed to that 
paper. They admire when they read that 
it cost his lordship £2,500 to settle himself 
356 



BISHOPS AND ECONOMY 

comfortably in his new house, and wonder 
if they could have done it more cheaply. 
They are interested to learn that the 
most hideous of all known costumes— the 
episcopal "Magpie" — costs £ioo, and they 
fancy that Mrs. Bishop could have stitched 
together something more comely at less 
cost. Hospitality to the tune of £2,000 a 
year rather staggers them, for their modest 
housekeeping assures themi that a great 
deal of bread and mutton and table-beer 
can be procured for a very moderate figure. 
About the expenses incidental to such 
patriarchal appendages as wives and chil- 
dren—ball-gowns for the daughters and 
cigars for the boys — reformers do not 
presume to dogmatize ; and they are quite 
prepared to believe the " Diocesan Bishop, " 
when he assures them that " Stables " — 
in the present day he would say Garages 
— " are almost a necessity, and in some 
respects a saving." 

" The stair-carpets at Farnham Castle are 
measured by miles," wrote Bishop Thorold. 
" My episcopal income goes in pelargoniums," 

357 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

murmured Bishop Stubbs. " It takes five 
chaps to keep this garden in order," said 
a more vernacular prelate, as he surveyed his 
lawns. These bitter cries were not unheatd. 

Such hardships touched even the horny 
hearts of calculators and economists, and we 
who are Churchmen had schooled ourselves 
into a very proper state of mind ; we had 
persuaded ourselves that things are well 
as they are, and that " Purple, Palaces, 
Patronage, Profit, and Power " (as Sydney 
Smith enumerated them) were not only very 
nice for those who enjoyed them, but were, 
in some mysterious way never quite ex- 
plained, inextricably involved in the well- 
being of " our pure Established Mother." 

But the Bishop of London, with his 
engaging candour and heedless eloquence, 
has once again stirred the waters of con- 
troversy. If he were more worldly-wise, 
he would have imitated the cautious 
reserve of the Archbishops of Canterbury 
and York (both Scotsmen), who pocket 
much larger incomes and say nothing about 
them ; or he might have followed the 
358 



BISHOPS AND ECONOMY 

manly lead of the late Prime Minister, 
who said, " I draw my salary, and intend 
to do so," and closed the debate at 
that point. These public discussions of 
episcopal incomes disturb my peace. They 
remind me of John Bright's irreverent 
declaration : — 

If I had been a bishop, with an income of five to 
fifteen thousand a year, I should have had an in- 
exhaustible source of rejoicing and merriment in the 
generosity, if not in the credulity, of my countrymen. 

And I am apprehensive lest the spirit of 
that grand old iconoclast should revive in 
these latter days. We are told from every 
pulpit that, when' the war is over, our 
national religion is to be something quite 
different from what we have known before. 
How terrible if, among other changes, it 
insists on a primitive episcopate, such as 
that of Bishop Thomas Wilson, who ruled 
the diocese of Sodor and Man on £300 a 
year ! WTien this comes to pass, farewell 
to Lambeth, with its guard -room'; and 
Fulhara, with its pleasure-grounds; and 
Farnhani, with its deer-park ; and Wells, 

359 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

with its moated garden. We have been 
taught that these things endeared the 
Church to the toihng masses, and cheered 
the palUd curate in his dingy lodgings. 
But, if once the rash career of innova- 
tion begins, they will not long survive. 
Instead of them we shall see square, 
commodious houses of red brick, with 
" gravelled sweeps " and stunted laurels ; 
and a buttony boy will discharge the 
functions of the stately gate -porter, and a 
neat damsel in a white cap will carve 
the episcopal beef and pour the foaming 
lemonade. Where, not many years ago, 
the Prince Bishop rolled from his castle 
to the parish church in a coach-and-four, 
his successor will trudge through the mud 
or scale the^ knife-board of the bus, carrying 
with his own apostolic hands the sacred 
appliances of Mitre or Magpie ; and these 
will be only the outward signs of more 
momentous changes. The new Bishop of 
Exeter ' shows tendencies in this direction, 
and I understand that some of his elder 
brethren are ready to follow in his steps. 

' Lord William Cecil. 
360 



BISHOPS AND ECONOMY 

W. F. Hook, the faimous Vicar of Leeds, 
was neither a revolutionary nor a dreamer, 
and this was, seventy years ago^, his remedy 
for the besetting weakness of the Church of 
England : — 

We want not proud Lords, haughty spiritual Peers, 
to be our Bishops. Offer four thousand out of their 
five thousand a year for the education of the people, 
and call upon the more wealthy of the other clergy 
to do the same, and a fund is at once provided. 
Let Farnham Castle, and Winchester House, and 
Ripon Palace be sold, and we shall have funds to 
establish other bishoprics. Let the Church do some- 
thing like this, and then the Church will live in the 
hearts of the people who now detest her. . . . You 
see, I am almost a Radical, for I do not see why our 
Bishops should not become as poor as Ambrose or 
Augustine, that they may make the people truly 
rich. 

This letter was addressed to Samuel 
Wilberforce just before he became a 
Bishop ; and the admirers of that excellent 
prelate will not be surprised to learn that 
he said in reply : "To impoverish our 
Bishops and sell their Palaces would only 
be the hopeless career of revolution." 



361 



X 

CONSIDER A TION 

One of the masterpieces of Catholic Htera- 
ture is St. Bernard's treatise on Considera- 
tion. The Saint had been appointed by 
Eugenius III to preach the Second Crusade, 
which had ended in complete and apparently- 
hopeless failure. " Soon a murmur of wrath' 
and reproach was heard, which, rising in 
ever -swelling volume, at last broke into 
articulate utterance." Bernard was accused 
and reviled as the author of the calamities 
which had overtaken the Crusade. <Why 
had he preached it ? »Why had he pro- 
phesied success? Why had he wrought 
miracles to make men join it ? The effect 
of this storm was curious ; not the least 
what the revilers had expected, but emi- 
nently worthy of a saint. Bernard did 
not recriminate ; he did not even attempt 
3C2 



CONSIDERATION 



to defend his reputation for wisdom or 
sincerity. He let his critics rail, and calmly 
applied himself to his treatise on " Con- 
sideration/' which he defined as " the 
application of the mind to the search for 
truth." 

The particular line which his Considera- 
tion followed, though it had a strict rele- 
vance to the circumstances of the times, 
lies far enough off the track of our present 
thoughts. But the habit of Consideration 
— of applying the mind to the search for 
truth — is never out of date or out of place. 
It is specially useful when feelings are 
violently excited, and the true and eternal 
outline of things is obscured by temporary 
passions. When the war ;broke out, a 
good many people found themselves suddenly 
forced to undertake a function of which 
they had never dreamed, and, like St. 
Bernard, to preach a Crusade. For three 
years they have been preaching it " by 
divers portions and in divers manners." 
Some, like the Saint, have only incurred 
reproach, and, like him, they had better 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

steady their souls by serious and dispas- 
sionate thinking. 

Is war a good or an evil ? At any 
rate, we know a great deal more about 
it than we knew three years ago, and the 
modern Bernard may reply that the worst 
which we believed of it is true : that 
it is an unmixed and incalculable evil ; 
and that the man who creates it, or insti- 
gates it, or foments it, is an enemy of 
the human race. Is it wise to be prepared 
for this evil ? Until the dream of a universal 
and simultaneous disarmament is realized, 
surely yes ; and here is the sole justifica- 
tion for navies and armies, which other- 
wise would be useless relics of an exploded 
barbarism. A nation must always be pre- 
pared for war, as an individual must be 
prepared for death. But is it wise to 
be always occupied with the thought of 
war, which may or may not arise within 
any period of time which it concerns us 
to consider? Bernard will answer "No." 
Life is not worth having at the price of 
an ignoble solicitude for it ; and an atti- 
364 



CONSIDERATION 



tude of watchful jealousy is about the 
last which a great nation, conscious of 
its own strength, will adopt. It is better 
to be taken by surprise than to spend 
one's life in pavid apprehension of a danger 
which may be very far off. 

Is constitutional government a failure? 
or, as Prince Albert put it, are represen- 
tative institutions on their trial ? It is 
one of the mischiefs of war that English- 
men should have to ask such questions ; 
and the answer is that in war, even more 
conspicuously than in peace, constitutional 
government and representative institutions 
are not merely desirable, but essential. 
Wars may be devised by diplomatists and 
decreed by tyrants, but they are waged 
by peoples ; and constitutional government 
is the only method, except revolution, by 
which a people can pass judgment on 
the need for war, or regulate the methods 
by which it is pursued. The English 
Constitution is a magnificent product of 
nationality and history, and I have no 
love for attempts to tinker it. But 

365 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

Consideration suggests that, ' if it needs 
amendment in any particular, that amend- 
ment should aim at giving the people a 
more direct control over the supremely 
important business of treaty -making and 
war -waging. 

Is the system of government by Party 
played out? Here,, indeed, is matter 
for consideration. There are moments of 
national crisis when the idea of Party 
seems absurd, and men cry out : " Away 
with it — let us be governed by the best 
and wisest, no matter what they are called." 
This cry was heard in August 1914, when 
we all agreed to think that " the best 
and wisest " was only another name for 
the Liberal Cabinet. Experience having 
to some extent undermined that belief, we 
all renewed the cry of " No Party," and 
agreed that a composite Cabinet was the 
ideal arrangement. Now, again, the Com- 
posite Cabinet is played out, and our rulers 
have betaken themselves to all manner of 
new and strange devices. 

On one point, indeed, we all agree — 
366 



CONSIDERATION 



the absolute necessity, of winning the war. 
But the methods by which victory can 
best be assured are still the subject of 
lively discussion. Consideration of these 
facts points to the conclusion that, though 
we may wish to abolish Party, Party is 
too strong to be abolished. The spirit 
of freedom and the spirit of tyranny are 
hopelessly irreconcilable ; and, though 
their respective followers may honestly try 
to coalesce, the coalition cannot long endure. 
Like will always tend to unite itself with 
like, and this union is Party. 

Is it wise, in a free and self-governing 
nation, to enlarge the area of compulsion ? 
All Law is indeed compulsion, and with- 
out order there can be no freedom. But 
the object of all reasonable men is to 
be governed as little as possible ; and an 
attempt to over-govern may produce un- 
looked-for consequences. For example, 
Colonel Tufto, returning in khaki from 
France, may say : " A clerk who refuses 
to enlist — a railwayman who strikes — a 
munition-worker who slacks — ought to be 



367 



POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES 

shot." But Consideration suggests that 
this short and easy method would irritate, 
rather than terrorize, and might bring 
labour to an abrupt standstill precisely at 
the moment when its services are most 
vitally needed. 

There is yet another topic on which St. 
Bernard would have urged Consideration ; 
and even those who will not lis^ten to a 
saint may be willing to accept the same 
teaching from the mouth of a sage — " The 
beginning and the end of what is the 
matter with us in these days," said 
Carlyle, " is that we have forgotten God." 
That is a defect in our arrangements, of 
which Committees and Blue Books take 
no note ; and yet, if the Divine govern- 
ment of the universe is not a fable, to 
forget it may be disastrous. The worst 
error which a nation can commit is not 
to know "the time of its visitation." 



Printed in Great Britain by 
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON 



